Science and technology studies is famous for questioning conceptual and material boundaries by following controversies that cut across them. However, it has recently been argued that in research involving online platforms, there are also more practical boundaries to negotiate that are created by the variable availability, visibility, and structuring of data. In this paper, I highlight a potential tension between our inclination toward following controversies and “following the medium” and suggest that sometimes following controversies might involve going “against platforms” as (...) well as with them. I will illustrate this dilemma through an analysis of the controversy over the coverage of the Fukushima disaster on English language Wikipedia, which concerns boundaries between expert and lay knowledge but also the social and technical functioning of Wikipedia itself. For this reason, I show that following the controversy might mean making use of less formatted and less obvious data than Wikipedia normally provides. While this is not an argument against the use of automated digital research tools such as scrapers, I suggest that both quantitative and qualitative researchers need to be more willing to tweak their approaches based on the specificities of the case. (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)