Want to be on the top? Algorithmic power and the threat of invisibility on Facebook

Abstract

This article explores the new modalities of visibility engendered by new media, with a focus on the social networking site Facebook. Influenced by Foucault’s writings on Panopticism – that is, the architectural structuring of visibility – this article argues for understanding the construction of visibility on Facebook through an architectural framework that pays particular attention to underlying software processes and algorithmic power. Through an analysis of EdgeRank, the algorithm structuring the flow of information and communication on Facebook’s ‘News Feed’, I argue that the regime of visibility constructed imposes a perceived ‘threat of invisibility’ on the part of the participatory subject. As a result, I reverse Foucault’s notion of surveillance as a form of permanent visibility, arguing that participatory subjectivity is not constituted through the imposed threat of an all-seeing vision machine, but by the constant possibility of disappearing and becoming obsolete.

Platformed antagonism: racist discourses on fake Muslim Facebook pages

“…On Facebook, for example, users and organisations have to continuously adjust their communication to maximise the amount of user reactions they receive, at least if they want to reach a wide audience. If not, the platform's algorithms limit the proliferation of their content (Bucher, 2012). In countries such as Denmark, where 72.4% of citizens have a Facebook account and 58% use the platform daily (Rossi, Schwartz, & Mahnke, 2016), understanding and adjusting to social media logics is key for influencing public discourse.…”

‘Facebook for Academics’: The Convergence of Self-Branding and Social Media Logic on Academia.edu

“…The resulting rich-getricher dynamic mimics the self-reinforcing looping effects of social-media "Trending" charts (Gillespie, forthcoming). And like the algorithmic dynamics of Facebook's News Feed (Bucher, 2012), the visibility rewards (and invisibility punishments) of Academia.edu's filters offer a de-facto pedagogy in the art of getting noticed.…”

Algorithmic skin: health-tracking technologies, personal analytics and the biopedagogies of digitized health and physical education

“…It is worth considering for a moment why a deeper consideration of algorithms, and what has been termed 'algorithmic power' (Beer, 2009), is necessary for eHPE research. My approach is not to specify every technical detail of how an 'algorithmic system' works, but 'to be able to understand some of the logics or principles of their functioning in order to critically engage with the ways in which systems work on a theoretical level' (Bucher, 2012(Bucher, , p. 1177.…”

“…However, algorithms are more than simply computer science abstractions and routines for sorting and structuring data. As Bucher (2012Bucher ( , p. 1165 contends, 'algorithmic architectures dynamically constitute certain forms of social practice'. According to this view, much of contemporary everyday life in a heavily mediated world is governed by various sorting and filtering algorithms determining what users encounter online, perhaps most obviously in our encounters with major commercial organizations such as Google and Facebook (Bucher, 2012;Mager, 2012).…”

“…As Bucher (2012Bucher ( , p. 1165 contends, 'algorithmic architectures dynamically constitute certain forms of social practice'. According to this view, much of contemporary everyday life in a heavily mediated world is governed by various sorting and filtering algorithms determining what users encounter online, perhaps most obviously in our encounters with major commercial organizations such as Google and Facebook (Bucher, 2012;Mager, 2012). Algorithms have also emerged as an important object of analysis in studies of science (Mackenzie, 2006), cultural politics (Lash, 2007), identity formation (Cheney-Lippold, 2011), surveillance (Amoore, 2009), popular culture (Beer, 2013) and digital governance (Williamson, 2014b).…”