Algorithmic credibility, the hidden attraction of technology
This entry has the same title as the communication with which I participated in the XII International Congress of Cyberjournalism of Bilbao (Ciberpebi) on November 9 and 10, 2020 and whose synthesis can be seen in the video below.
The role of algorithms in user experience (UX) has attracted the attention of researchers in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in the last two decades. As early as 1999, Brian Jeffrey Fogg and Hsiang Tseng observed how the credibility findings of human interactions applied to human-machine relationships.
Christine T. Wolf of IBM Research has coined the concept of “algorithmic life” to express “that encounters with algorithmic systems can be conceptualized as lived”. In turn, “algorithmic credibility” would be framed in the “algorithmic encounter”, for whose study Wolf proposes to take practices as the central unit of analysis and thus better understand algorithms as they are found in everyday life.
This practical approach allows identifying credibility patterns originated by algorithms, as well as their characteristics. For example, the Facebook News Feed (the content that each user sees) or the Google search results are the product of algorithms that perform the same function as journalists: select content that is relevant to the user and determine in what order they are received. Precisely, relevance is a clear credibility factor.
In online communication, social networks and platforms of all kinds use algorithms and artificial intelligence to attract attention using the best attributes of credibility, from the recommendations of loved ones to the usefulness and gratuitousness of many applications that make life more easy. But these arts of seduction go unnoticed by most citizens when they go online.
Update — November 17, 2021
The article, collected in Spanish in the proceedings of Ciberpebi XII starting on page 364, can also be read in full in English on Medium.
Originally published at anselmolucio.wordpress.com on November 12, 2020.
