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The Burden of Choice: Recommendations, Subversion, and Algorithmic Culture
The Burden of Choice examines how recommendations for products, media, news, romantic partners, and even cosmetic surgery operations are produced and experienced online. Fundamentally concerned with how the recommendation has come to serve as a form of control that frames a contemporary American as heteronormative, white, and well off, this book asserts that the industries that use these automated recommendations tend to ignore and obscure all other identities in the service of making the type of affluence they are selling appear commonplace. Focusing on the period from the mid-1990s to approximately 2010 (while this technology was still novel), Jonathan Cohn argues that automated recommendations and algorithms are far from natural, neutral, or benevolent. Instead, they shape and are shaped by changing conceptions of gender, sexuality, race, and class. With its cultural studies and humanities-driven methodologies focused on close readings, historical research, and qualitative analysis, The Burden of Choice models a promising avenue for the study of algorithms and culture.
Book Details
- Publisher: Rutgers University Press
- Publish Date: Mar 1st, 2019
- Pages: 240
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.90in - 6.00in - 0.90in - 1.15lb
- EAN: 9780813597829
- Categories: • Media Studies• Internet - Search Engines• Social Aspects
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About the Author
JONATHAN COHN is an assistant professor at the University of Alberta in Canada.
More books by Jonathan Cohn
What people are saying
Rob Horning
@robhorning
2 years
I was an editor for Real Life
Kant quotes Jonathan Cohn's The Burden of Choice on this point. what I think is key here is that algorithmic systems harmonize people into patterns of behavior etc. while allow users to potentially experience that process as a kind of individuation, a freedom https://t.co/secA54A87X
Praise for this book
"Suffused with nuance and aplomb, Jonathan Cohn's The Burden of Choice details the asymmetries of power and disputed logics of contemporary algorithmic culture--an outstanding contribution to digital studies."--John Cheney-Lippold "author of We Are Data: Algorithms and The Making of Our Digital Selves"
"Algorithmic recommendations aren't politically neutral. But, as Cohn details in this illuminating book, nor is their power absolute. The Burden of Choice is a primer on algorithmic dissidence, couched in a history of computational decision making."--Ted Striphas "author of The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control"
"Fascinating and timely, this exciting book explores the history of algorithms, recommendations, and suggestions."--Chuck Tryon "author of On-Demand Culture: Digital Delivery and the Future of Movies"
"Google's algorithms discriminate against women and people of colour," by Jonathan Cohn-- "The Conversation"
"In navigating the terrain of user agency and its subversive potential, this book adds another dimension to the literature on critical information studies."-- "Television and New Media"
"Tired of Those Netflix and Amazon 'Recommendations'? Outwit the Algorithm," by Rebecca Dolan
https: //www.wsj.com/articles/tired-of-those-netflix-and-amazon-recommendations-outwit-the-algorithm-11562776566?mod=searchresultspage=1pos=1-- "Wall Street Journal"
https: //www.wsj.com/articles/tired-of-those-netflix-and-amazon-recommendations-outwit-the-algorithm-11562776566?mod=searchresultspage=1pos=1-- "Wall Street Journal"
What people are saying
Rob Horning
@robhorning
2 years
I was an editor for Real Life
Kant quotes Jonathan Cohn's The Burden of Choice on this point. what I think is key here is that algorithmic systems harmonize people into patterns of behavior etc. while allow users to potentially experience that process as a kind of individuation, a freedom https://t.co/secA54A87X