Investigating maternity tourism to the United States from Russia through the lens of technological mediation, this study foregrounds the geopolitical patterns of human reproduction that shape, and are shaped by, individual choices of maternal healthcare in a neoliberal healthcare market. Following the history of a highly popular Russian-language forum, I demonstrate how this online community gets imbricated into communicative biocapitalism – a neoliberal logic that commodifies the voice of an online user, turning networked publics into markets for medical services. Adding (...) to the literature on data colonialism, I explore a case in which data-driven algorithms effectively alter geographical distribution of reproductive bodies, outsourcing the production of new generations of neoliberal subjects through regimes of technological mediation. (shrink)

Adolescents have gradually become a vital group of interacting with social media recommendation algorithms. Although numerous studies have been conducted to investigate negative reactions that the dark side of recommendation algorithms brings to social media users, little is known about the resistance intention and behavior based on their agency in the daily process of encountering algorithms. Focusing on the concept of algorithm resistance, this study used a two-path model to investigate the algorithmic resistance of rural Chinese adolescents in their daily (...) use of short video apps. The findings revealed that the perceived threat to freedom, algorithmic literacy, and peer influence were positively associated with the resistance willingness and intention; while the independent psychology on algorithmic recommendations significantly weakened resistance willingness and intention. Furthermore, this study verified the mediating role of resistance willingness and intention between the above independent variables and resistance behavior. Additionally, the positive impact of resistance willingness on resistance intention was confirmed. In conclusion, this study offers a comprehensive approach to further understanding adolescents’ algorithmic resistance awareness and behavior by combining psychological factors, personal competency, and interpersonal influences, as well as two types of resistance reactions. (shrink)

In recent years, scholars in the social sciences and humanities have turned their attention to how the rise of digital technologies is reshaping political life in contemporary society. Here, we analyze this issue by distinguishing between two classification technologies typical of pre-digital and digital eras that differently constitute the relationship between individuals and groups. In class-based systems, characteristic of the pre-digital era, one’s status as an individual is gained through membership in a group in which salient social identities are shared (...) in common with other group members. In attribute-based systems, characteristic of the digital era, one’s status as an individual is determined by virtue of possession of a set of attributes that need not be shared with others. We argue that differences between these two types of classification technologies have important implications for how persons attach (or fail to attach) to groups, and therefore what kinds of political mobilization are possible. We illustrate this argument by examining contention over the use of gender as a variable in the pricing of risk in insurance and credit – two markets in which individuals directly encounter class-based and attribute-based systems of classification, respectively. (shrink)

Building on critical approaches that understand algorithms in terms of communication, culture and organization, this paper offers the supplementary conceptualization of algorithms as organizational figuration, defined as material and meaningful sociotechnical arrangements that develop in spatiotemporal processes and are shaped by multiple enactments of affordance–agency relations. We develop this conceptualization through a case study of a Danish fintech start-up that uses machine learning to create opportunities for sustainable pensions investments. By way of ethnographic and literary methodology, we provide an in-depth (...) analysis of the dynamic trajectory in and through which the organization gives shape to and takes shape from its key algorithmic tool, mapping the shifting sociotechnical arrangements of the start-up, from its initial search for a viable business model through the development of the algorithm to the public launch of its product. On this basis, we argue that conceptualizing algorithms as organizational figuration enables us to detail not only what algorithms do but also what they are. (shrink)