Automated media: An institutional theory perspective on algorithmic media production and consumption

Communication Theory

Volumn 24, Issue 3, 2014, Pages 340-360

  Napoli, Philip M ^a  

^a RUTGERS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ALGORITHM; ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK; AUTOMATION; COMMUNICATION; MASS MEDIA; THEORETICAL STUDY;

EID: 84904360045     PISSN: 10503293     EISSN: 14682885     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/comt.12039     Document Type: Article

References (103)

1. Abrutyn, S., & Turner, J. H. (2011). The old institutionalism meets the new institutionalism. Sociological Perspectives, 54(3), 283-306. doi:10.1525/sop.2011.54.3.283
2. Ahlkvist, J. A. (2001). Programming philosophies and the rationalization of music radio. Media, Culture & Society, 23(3), 339-358. doi:10.1177/016344301023003004
3. Alchian, A. A., & Demsetz, H. (1972). Production, information costs, and economic organization. American Economic Review, 62, 777-795. doi:10.2307/1815199
4. Anderson, C. (2006). The long tail: How the future of business is selling less of more. New York, NY: Hyperion.
5. Anderson, L. (2010). AOL and its algorithm. Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved from http://www.cjr.org/feature/aol_and_its_algorithm.php?page=all
6. Anderson, C. W. (2011a). Deliberative, agonistic, and algorithmic audiences: Journalism's vision of its public in an age of audience transparency. International Journal of Communication, 5, 529-547.
7. Anderson, C. W. (2011b). Between creative and quantified audiences: Web metrics and changing patterns of newswork in local U.S. newsrooms. Journalism: Theory, Practice, and Criticism, 12(5), 550-566. doi:10.1177/1464884911402451
8. Anderson, C. W. (2011c, October). Understanding the role played by algorithms and computational practices in the collection, evaluation, presentation, and dissemination of journalistic evidence. Paper presented at the 1st Berlin Symposium on the Internet and Society, Berlin, Germany.
9. Anderson, C. W. (2013). Towards a sociology of computational and algorithmic journalism. New Media & Society, 15(7), 1005-1021. doi:10.1177/1461444812465137
10. Bakker, P. (2012). Aggregation, content farms, and Huffinization: The rise of low-pay and no- pay journalism. Journalism Practice, 6(5-6), 627-637. doi:10.1080/17512786.2012.667266
11. Beer, D. (2009). Power through the algorithm? Participatory web cultures and the technological unconscious. New Media & Society, 11(6), 985-1002. doi:10.1177/1461444809336551
12. Benjamin, S. M. (2013). Algorithms and speech. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 161, 1445-1493.
13. Benson, R. (2006). New media as a "journalistic field": What Bourdieu adds to new institutionalism, and vice versa. Political Communication, 23, 187-202. doi:10.1080/10584600600629802
14. Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality: A treatise on the sociology of knowledge. New York, NY: Anchor Books.
15. Bucher, T. (2012a). Want to be on top? Algorithmic power and the threat of invisibility on Facebook. New Media & Society, 14(7), 1164-1180. doi:10.1177/1461444812440159
16. Bucher, T. (2012b). A technicity of attention: How software "makes sense." Culture Machine, 13, 1-23.
17. Carr, D. (2011, March 20). The evolving mission of Google. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/business/media/21carr.html?_r=0
18. Carr, D. (2013, February 24). Giving viewers what they want. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/business/media/for-house-of-cards-using-big-data-to-guarantee-its-popularity.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
19. Cho, J., & Roy, S. (2004, May). Impact of search engines on Web page popularity. Paper presented at the WWW2004 Conference, New York, NY.
20. Chu, Z., Gianvecchio, S., Wang, H., & Jajodia, S. (2011). Who is tweeting on Twitter: Human, bot, or cyborg? Proceedings of the 26th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (pp. 21-30). New York: Association for Computing Machinery.
21. Constant, E. W. (2012). The social locus of technological practice. In W. E. Bijker, T. P. Hughes & T. Pinch (Eds.), The social construction of technological systems: New directions in the sociology and history of technology (Anniversary ed., pp. 217-236). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
22. Cook, T. E. (2005). Governing with the news: The news media as a political institution (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
23. Cook, T. E. (2006). The news media as a political institution: Looking backward and looking forward. Political Communication, 23, 159-171. doi:10.1080/10584600600629711
24. Cosley, D., Lam, S. K., Albert, I., Konstan, J. A., & Riedl, J. (2003, April). Is seeing believing? How recommender system interfaces affect users' opinions. Paper presented at the CHI 2003 Conference, Fort Lauderdale, FL.
25. Couldry, N. (2008). Actor-network theory and media: Do they connect and on what terms?. In A. Hepp, F. Krotz, S. Moores & C. Winter (Eds.), Connectivity, networks and flows: Conceptualizing contemporary communications (pp. 93-111). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
26. Davenport, T. H., & Harris, J. G. (2009). What people want to know (and how to predict it). MIT Sloan Management Review, 50(2), 23-31.
27. Diakopoulos, N. (2014). Algorithmic accountability reporting: Investigation of black boxes (Tow/Knight Brief). New York, NY: Tow Center for Digital Journalism. Retrieved from http://towcenter.org/algorithmic-accountability-2/
28. DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1991a). Introduction. In W. W. Powell & P. J. DiMaggio (Eds.), The new institutionalism in organizational analysis (pp. 1-38). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
29. DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1991b). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. In W. W. Powell & P. J. DiMaggio (Eds.), The new institutionalism in organizational analysis (pp. 63-82). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
30. Douglas, M. (1986). How institutions think. New York, NY: Syracuse University Press.
31. Elgesem, D. (2008). Search engines and the public use of reason. Ethics and Information Technology, 10, 233-242. doi:10.1007/s10676-008-9177-3
32. Epstein, R., & Robertson, R. E. (2013, May). Democracy at risk: Manipulating search rankings can shift voting preferences substantially without voter awareness. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, Washington, DC.
33. Ettema, J. S., & Whitney, D. C. (1994). The money arrow: An introduction to audiencemaking. In J. S. Ettema & D. C. Whitney (Eds.), Audiencemaking: How the media create the audience (pp. 1-18). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
34. Flanagin, A. J., Flanagin, C., & Flanagin, J. (2010). Technical code and the social construction of the Internet. New Media & Society, 12(2), 179-196. doi:10.1177/1461444809341391
35. Galperin, H. (2004). Beyond interests, ideas, and technology: An institutional approach to communication and information policy. The Information Society, 20, 159-168. doi:10.1080/01972240490456818
36. Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press.
37. Gillespie, T. (2011, October). Can an algorithm be wrong? limn, issue 2. Retrieved from http://limn.it/can-an-algorithm-be-wrong/
38. Gillespie, T. (2014). The relevance of algorithms. In T. Gillespie, P. Boczkowski & K. Foot (Eds.), Media technologies (pp. 167-194). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
39. Gladwell, M. (2006, October 16). The formula: What if you built a machine to predict hit movies? The New Yorker. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/16/061016fa_fact6
40. Goldman, E. (2006). Search engine bias and the demise of search engine utopianism. Yale Journal of Law & Technology, 9, 111-123. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-75829-7
41. Grimmelman, J. (2008/2009). The Google dilemma. New York Law School Law Review, 53, 939-950.
42. Guzman, T. (2005). The little theatre movement: The institutionalization of the European art film in America. Film History, 17, 261-284. doi:10.1353/fih.2005.0020
43. Halavais, A. (2009). Search engine society. Cambridge, England: Polity Press.
44. Hindman, M. (2009). The myth of digital democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
45. Hrynshyn, D. (2008). Globalization, nationality and commodification: The politics of the social construction of the Internet. New Media & Society, 10(5), 751-770. doi:10.1177/1461444808094355
46. Hughes, T. P. (2012). The evolution of large technological systems. In W. E. Bijker, T. P. Hughes & T. Pinch (Eds.), The social construction of technological systems: New directions in the sociology and history of technology (Anniversary ed., pp. 45-76). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
47. Ingram, M. (2013, December 9). The scorpion and the frog: Who wins as Facebook makes tweaks to its newsfeed algorithms. Gigaom. Retrieved from http://gigaom.com/2013/12/09/the-scorpion-and-the-frog-who-wins-as-facebook-makes-tweaks-to-its-newsfeed-algorithms/
48. Jepperson, R. L. (1991). Institutions, institutional effects, and institutionalism. In W. W. Powell & P. J. DiMaggio (Eds.), The new institutionalism in organizational analysis (pp. 143-163). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
49. Jiang, M. (2014). The business and politics of search engines: A comparative study of Baidu and Google's search results of Internet events in China. New Media & Society, 16(2), 212-233. doi:10.1177/1461444813481196
50. Joerges, B., & Czamiawska, B. (1998). The question of technology, or how organizations inscribe the world. Organization Studies, 19(3), 363-385. doi:10.1177/017084069801900301
51. Jones, J. (2012, October). Creating networks through search: PageRank, algorithmic truth, and tracing the Web. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers, Salford, England.
52. Kaplan, R. L. (2006). The news about new institutionalism: Journalism's ethic of objectivity and its political origins. Political Communication, 23, 173-185. doi:10.1080/10584600600629737
53. Katzenbach, C. (2011). Technologies as institutions: Rethinking the role of technology in media governance constellations. In M. Puppis & M. Just (Eds.), Trends in communication policy research (pp. 117-138). Bristol, England: Intellect.
54. Keating, G. (2012). Netflixed: The epic battle for America's eyeballs. New York, NY: Portfolio.
55. Kim, J. (2012). The institutionalization of YouTube: From user-generated content to professionally generated content. Media, Culture & Society, 34(1), 53-67. doi:10.1177/0163443711427199
56. La Torre, M. (2010). Law as institution. Law & Philosophy Library, 90, 97-134.
57. Laidlaw, E. B. (2008). Private power, public interest: An examination of search engine accountability. International Journal of Law & Information Technology, 17(1), 113-145. doi:10.1093/ijlit/ean018
58. Langlois, G., Elmer, G., McKelvey, F., & Devereaux, Z. (2009). Networked publics: The double articulation of code and politics on Facebook. Canadian Journal of Communication, 34, 415-434.
59. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor network theory. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
60. Leonard, A. (2013, February 1). How Netflix is turning viewers into puppets. Salon. Retrieved from http://www.salon.com/2013/02/01/how_netflix_is_turning_viewers_into_puppets/
61. Leonardi, P. M. (2012). Materiality, sociomateriality, and socio-technical systems: What do these terms mean? How are they different? Do we need them?. In P. M. Leonardi, B. A. Bardi & J. Kallinikos (Eds.), Materiality and organizing: Social interaction in a technological world (pp. 25-48). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
62. Lessig, L. (2006). Code and other laws of cyberspace 2.0. New York, NY: Basic Books.
63. Lohr, S. (2011, September 10). In case you wondered, a real human wrote this. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/business/computer-generated-articles-are-gaining-traction.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
64. Lowrey, W. (2011). Institutionalism, news organizations and innovation. Journalism Studies, 12(1), 64-79. doi:10.1080/1461670X.2010.511954
65. Lowrey, W., & Woo, C. W. (2010). The news organization in uncertain times: Business or institution? Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 87(1), 41-61. doi:10.1177/107769901008700103
66. Mager, A. (2012). Algorithmic ideology. Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), 269-787. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2012.676056
67. Manovich, L. (2013). Software takes command. New York, NY: Bloomsbury.
68. Mayer-Schonberger, V., & Cukier, K. (2013). Big data: A revolution that will transform how we live, work, and think. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
69. McMains, A. (2012, March 27). Is Facebook a media or tech company? Adweek. Retrieved from http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/facebook-media-or-tech-company-139242
70. Moe, T. (1990). Political institutions: The neglected side of the story. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organizations, 6, 213-253. doi:10.1093/jleo/6.special_issue.213
71. Moe, H., & Syvertsen, T. (2007). Media institutions as a research field. Nordicom Review, 28, 149-167.
72. MOZ (2013). Google algorithm change history. Retrieved from: http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
73. Napoli, P. M. (1997). A principal-agent approach to the study of media organizations: Toward a theory of the media firm. Political Communication, 14(2), 207-219. doi:10.1080/105846097199443
74. Napoli, P. M. (2001). Foundations of communications policy: Principles and process in the regulation of electronic media. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
75. Napoli, P. M. (2003). Audience economics: Media institutions and the audience marketplace. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
76. Napoli, P. M. (2009). Navigating producer-consumer convergence: Media policy priorities in the era of user-generated and user-distributed content. Communications & Convergence Review, 1(1), 32-43.
77. Napoli, P. M. (2011). Audience evolution: New technologies and the transformation of media audiences. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
78. North, D. (1981). Structure and change in economic history. New York, NY: Norton.
79. Pariser, E. (2011). The filter bubble: What the Internet is hiding from you. New York, NY: Penguin.
80. Pasquale, F. (2010). Dominant search engines: An essential cultural & political facility. In B. Szoka & A. Marcus (Eds.), The next digital decade: Essays on the future of the Internet (pp. 401-418). Washington, DC: TechFreedom.
81. Phillips, N., & Malhotra, N. (2008). Taking social construction seriously: Extending the discursive approach in institutional theory. In R. Greenwood, et al. (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of organizational institutionalism (pp. 702-719). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
82. Pierce, D. (2013, October, 30). Barnes & Noble's new Nook GlowLight is faster, lighter, and full of ideas. The Verge. Retrieved from http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/30/5044378/barnes-nobles-new-nook-glowlight-lighter-faster-full-of-ideas
83. Plesner, U. (2009). An actor-network theory perspective on changing work practices: Communication technologies as actants in newswork. Journalism, 10(5), 604-626. doi:10.1177/1464884909106535
84. Rogers, R. (2004). Information politics on the Web. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
85. Roth, D. (2009, November). The answer factory: Demand Media and the fast, disposable, and profitable as hell media model. Wired. Retrieved from http://www.wired/com/magazine/2009/10/ff_demandmedia
86. Schudson, M. (2002). The news media as political institutions. Annual Review of Political Science, 5, 249-269. doi:10.1146/annurev.polisci.5.111201.115816
87. Scott, W. R. (2008). Institutions and organizations: Ideas and interests (3rd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
88. Scott, S. V., & Orlikowski, W. J. (2012). Great expectations: The materiality of commensurability in social media. In P. M. Leonardi, B. A. Nardi & J. Kallinikos (Eds.), Materiality and organizing: Social interaction in a technological world (pp. 113-133). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
89. Sparrow, B. H. (1999). Uncertain guardians: The news media as a political institution. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
90. Sparrow, B. H. (2006). A research agenda for institutional media. Political Communication, 23, 145-157. doi:10.1080/10584600600629695
91. Steiner, C. (2012). Automate this: How algorithms came to rule our world. New York, NY: Portfolio.
92. Suddaby, R. (2010). Challenges for institutional theory. Journal of Management Inquiry, 19(1), 14-20. doi:10.1177/1056492609347564
93. Tartakoff, J. (2010, August 17). AOL's Patch aims to quintuple size by year-end. paidContent. Retrieved from http://paidcontent.org/2010/08/17/419-aols-patch-aims-to-quintuple-in-size-by-year-end/
94. Tartakoff, J. (2011, February 24). In latest anti-"content farm" move, Google changes its search algorithm. paidContent. Retrieved from http://paidcontent.org/2011/02/25/419-in-latest-anti-content-farm-move-google-changes-its-algorithm/
95. Ulanoff, L. (2014, January 30). Facebook Paper is content - but don't call Facebook a media company. Mashable. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2014/01/30/facebook-paper-app-analysis/
96. Ullman, E. (1997). Close to the machine: Technophilia and its discontents. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books.
97. Uricchio, W. (2011). The algorithmic turn: Photosynth, augmented reality and the changing implications of the image. Visual Studies, 26(1), 25-35. doi:10.1080/1472586X.2011.548486
98. Vaidhyanathan, S. (2011). The Googlization of everything (and why we should worry). Berkeley: University of California Press.
99. Van Couvering, E. (2007). Is relevance relevant? Market, science, and war: Discourses of search engine quality. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12, 866-887. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00354.x
100. Webster, J. G. (2010). User information regimes: How social media shape patterns of consumption. Northwestern University Law Review, 104(2), 593-612.
101. Webster, J. G. (2011). The duality of media: A structurational theory of public attention. Communication Theory, 21, 43-66. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2885.2010.01375.x
102. Wu, T. (2013). Machine speech. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 161, 1495-1533.
103. Zucker, L. G. (1977). The role of institutionalization in cultural persistence. American Sociological Review, 42(5), 726-743. doi:10.2307/2094862