Recommender systems as “tastemakers”: collaborative filtering as a market strategy for online cultural products

Abstract

In the cultural market, the operation of which depends on the creation of intersubjective values to generate the production of consumers, the market strategies to adjust supply and demand have been historically characterised by mechanisms of social recommendation; a phenomenon that has intensified and changed on the Internet. The aim of this paper is to discuss the social conditions for the production of belief in symbolic goods and their applications in online markets. Pierre Bourdieu’s theory on the field of cultural production provides the conceptual grounding for the proposal of a theoretical study that compares traditional instances of symbolic goods recommendation and today’s online recommender systems. This analysis diagnoses the transformation of social processes of influence on online cultural consumption through collaborative filtering and identifies relevant topics for future research in the domain of cultural goods e-commerce.