No abstract

Algorithms have developed into somewhat of a modern myth. On the one hand, they have been depicted as powerful entities that rule, sort, govern, shape, or otherwise control our lives. On the other hand, their alleged obscurity and inscrutability make it difficult to understand what exactly is at stake. What sustains their image as powerful yet inscrutable entities? And how to think about the politics and governance of something that is so difficult to grasp? This editorial essay provides a critical backdrop for the special issue, treating algorithms not only as computational artifacts but also as sensitizing devices that can help us rethink some entrenched assumptions about agency, transparency, and normativity.

When measures come to matter, those measured find themselves in a precarious situation. On the one hand, they have a strong incentive to respond to measurement so as to score a favourable rating. On the other hand, too much of an adjustment runs the risk of being flagged and penalized by system operators as an attempt to ‘game the system’. Measures, the story goes, are most useful when they depict those measured as they usually are and not how they intend to be. In this article, I explore the practices and politics of optimization in the case of web search engines. Drawing on materials from ethnographic fieldwork with search engine optimization (SEO) consultants in the United Kingdom, I show how maximizing a website’s visibility in search results involves navigating the shifting boundaries between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ optimization. Specifically, I am interested in the ethical work performed as SEO consultants artfully arrange themselves to cope with moral ambiguities provoked and delegated by the operators of the search engine. Building on studies of ethics as a practical accomplishment, I suggest that the ethicality of optimization has itself become a site of governance and contestation. Studying such practices of ‘being ethical’ not only offers opportunities for rethinking popular tropes like ‘gaming the system’, but also draws attention to often-overlooked struggles for authority at the margins of contemporary ranking schemes.

Algorithms have become a widespread trope for making sense of social life. Science, finance, journalism, warfare, and policing-there is hardly anything these days that has not been specified as ''algorithmic.'' Yet, although the trope has brought together a variety of audiences, it is not quite clear what kind of work it does. Often portrayed as powerful yet inscrutable entities, algorithms maintain an air of mystery that makes them both interesting and difficult to understand. This article takes on this problem and examines the role of algorithms not as techno-scientific objects to be known, but as a figure that is used for making sense of observations. Following in the footsteps of Harold Garfinkel's tutorial cases, I shall illustrate the implications of this view through an experiment with algorithmic navigation. Challenging participants to go on a walk, guided not by maps or GPS but by an algorithm developed on the spot, I highlight a number of dynamics typical of reasoning with running code, including the ongoing respecification of rules and observations, the stickiness of the procedure, and the selective invocation of the algorithm as an intelligible object. The materials thus provide an opportunity to rethink key issues at the intersection of the social sciences and the computational, including popular concerns with transparency, accountability, and ethics.We watch an ant making his laborious way across a wind-and wave-molded beach. He moves ahead, angles to the right to ease his climb up a steep dunelet, detours around a pebble, stops for a moment to exchange information with a compatriot. Thus he makes his weaving, halting way back to his home. So as not to anthropomorphize about his purposes, I sketch the path on a piece of paper. It is a sequence of irregular, angular segments-not quite a random walk, for it has an underlying sense of direction, of aiming toward a goal. (Simon, 1996: 51)

Internet governance is a difficult horse to catch. Far from being a coherent field of study, it presents itself as scattered across a range of disciplinary approaches that come with distinct theoretical, methodological and analytical preoccupations. In this paper, we critically review existing literatures on governance of, on and through the internet and draw attention to the ways in which they help perform the worlds in which they have their place. Retelling the case of the 'Twitter Joke Trial', we highlight the contingent and at times conflicting roles attributed to people, technologies and institutions, as well as the concerns that come with these. Rather than striving for a coherent definition of 'internet governance', we draw on recent work in science and technology studies to show that acknowledging the performativity and multiplicity of different modes of governance can open up a productive line of inquiry into the recursive relationship between governance research and practice.