Machinic critique – Richard Rogers

Machinic critique: Web epistemological approaches in contemporary historical perspective

Richard Rogers, University of Amsterdam

Who or what is granted the privilege to provide information? Web epistemology is the study of how engines and platforms make those adjudicative decisions. Under scrutiny are privileging mechanisms behind boosting and amplifying, which more recently have included downranking. The talk surveys twenty-five years of web epistemological critique, discussing such notions as preferred placement, orphan websites, googlearchy, algorithmic updating, neo-colonial result sets, personalisation, the golden triangle, the organic patch, offensive suggestions, ‘meaningful social interaction’, serious query curation and, finally, removal. It concludes with a discussion of the rise of one form of synthetic media as the current approach to automated content moderation.

Richard Rogers is Professor of New Media & Digital Culture, Media Studies, University of Amsterdam and Director of the Digital Methods Initiative, Amsterdam.

This event is co-organised by the Department of Digital Humanities and the Centre for Digital Culture, King's College London. If you tweet about the event you can use the #kingsdh hashtag or mention @kingsdh. If you'd like to get notifications of future events you can sign up to this mailing list.