The Burden of Choice : Recommendations, Subversion, and Algorithmic Culture / Jonathan Cohn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cohn, Jonathan, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Consumer behavior.

Consumer profiling.

Consumption (Economics).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 226 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction: Data Fields of Dreams

1. A Brief History of Good Choices

2. Female Labor and Digital Media: Pattie Maes and the Birth of Recommendation Systems and Social Networking Technologies

3. Mapping the Stars: TiVo's, Netflix's, and Digg's Digital Media Distribution and Talking Back to Algorithms

4. Love's Labor's Logged: The Weird Science of Matchmaking Systems and Its Parodies

5. The Mirror Phased: Embodying the Recommendation via Virtual Cosmetic Surgeries and Beautification Engines

Conclusion: On Handling Toddlers and Structuring the Limits of Knowledge

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 193-220) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 06. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780813597836

0813597838

9780813597850

0813597854

OCLC:

1100454974