Carleton News Room recently highlighted Prof. Sarah Brouillette research on TikTok, which she argues is one among a handful of social media platforms changing the conditions that writers and other publishing industry workers face today. You can find out more about this work at Post 45, where Prof. Brouillette and Susanna Sacks track the shaping force that social media platform algorithms are having on reading practices and emerging aesthetics.
In “Reading with Algorithms,” Prof. Brouillette and her co-author argue that AI and machine learning, data collection and control, are now inescapable facets of how people read: watched over by corporations, interrupted by advertisements, distracted by multiplying devices and open tabs, joined by others engaging with the same content, our practices all observed and reflected in new textual forms. They notice that algorithmic effects are distributed and experienced unevenly, reflecting varying levels of access to social media reading experiences, as well as varying forms of exposure to surveillance and control. They ask: What does it mean to read with and through algorithmic structures?