Introduction to the Course

This course examines persuasive genres in the context of algorithmic culture. Algorithms now shape our access to entertainment, information, and persuasion.

My Netflix is not your Netflix.

My Google is not your Google.

My Amazon is not your Amazon.

And my Facebook, Instagram and Twitter look nothing at all like yours — except for the presence of compelling advertising that is hard to resist because it is so precisely targeted to the things I am hoping to buy.

We start this course with Tarleton Gillespie’s marvelous essay, The relevance of algorithms. In this essay, Gillespie highlights the role of the database, as digital platforms make choices about how data is included, excluded and made ready for algorithmic discovery. ready. He helps us understand that the economic power of algorithms is in the ability to predict user behaviors. To understand algorithmic selection (and its persuasive power), we must appreciate how algorithms determine what is relevant. There are substantial political dimensions to what counts as “legitimate knowledge.”

Although digital platforms want users to believe that the technical character of the algorithm makes it objective and impartial, there is plenty of controversy about this. Just this week, the government of Brazil temporarily bans social media platforms from removing many types of content, including misinformation about COVID-19 and the country’s upcoming presidential election. Brazil is the first country in the world to make it illegal for platforms to take down certain types of content, even as other countries around the world (including Germany, China, and others) implement rules that force social media companies to take down more types of content proactively.