Upholding young users’ autonomy and enhancing algorithmic literacy by web design: the case of the ALVEHO website
(2022) Everyday Algorithms: Algocount conference — Location: Milano (7.July.2022)
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- Authors
Malcorps, Sylvain 
- Abstract
- The most popular narratives surrounding the use of personnalisation technologies usually favour a strong deterministic approach exaggerating the impact of the algorithm and downplaying users’ agency. That’s for instance the case with the “filter bubble” theory (Pariser, 2012). However, current research on the subject offers us with a more nuanced image of users’ interactions with recommender systems (Bruns, 2019; Dahlgren, 2021 ; Moeller & Helberger, 2018). Multiple contributions to the field have also highlighted how users adapt their behaviour according to a complex set of representations and imaginaries (Bucher, 2017 ; Eslami et al., 2015). For the first part of our communication, we will contribute to this growing field of research by illustrating how users develop tactics based on their algorithmic imaginaries to retrieve some form of authority over the system. These findings from a survey of young users of social networks will allow us to describe their relation to the system in terms of inclination (Ihde, 1990) rather than through a dynamic of domination and resistance. However, most of these tactics are usually limited or discouraged by the affordances of the system (Davis, 2020). This raises the question of whether it is possible to develop a system that is upholding user’s autonomy (Milano et al., 2020 ) rather than trapping them in a media landscape that could potentially harm them (Seaver, 2019). With these tactics in mind, as well as the practical concerns of the public service media collaborating on this project, we developped an experimental website equipped with a news recommender system and control functionalities allowing the user to tinker with the algorithm. The second part of our contribution will be dedicated to the presentation of this website as well as our first experimental results. In particular, we will be discussing features that could potentially encourage users to scrutinize the recommendations and question their effects.
- Affiliations
Citations
Claes, A., Philippette, T., Malcorps, S., & Dufrasne, M. (2022). Upholding young users’ autonomy and enhancing algorithmic literacy by web design: the case of the ALVEHO website. Everyday Algorithms: Algocount conference, Milano. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/234345