the numbering life of platforms. organising value and relations in social media
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Carolin Gerlitz and Natalia Sánchez-QuerubínDigital Methods Winter School 2016
University of Amsterdam
THE NUMBERING LIFE OF PLATFORMSOrganising Value and Relations in Social Media
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Online life has been subject to counting and numbering from its earliest days as there is a long history of making numbers visible and key elements on web pages, social media and platforms.
These numbers, or metrics, measure and present our social value and activity, enumerating friends, likes, comments, and more. Facebook Demetricator is a web browser addon that hides these metrics. No longer is the focus on how many friends you have or on how much they like your status, but on who they are and what they said .
Benjamin Grosser
To which extent are numbers entangled in or a means of setting up and negotiating stakeholder relations? How do they operate as calculative devices for the actors involved and how are they entangled in valuation and valorisation?
TODAY1-2-3
The challenges of numbering on the web | Entanglement between numbers and the ‘politics of platforms’? | YouTube.
com as case study
Numbering Digital Life
1server logs | hit counters | web
counters | spam | Javascript | tags| cookies | widgets | analytics | social
media buttons
1990s
● Server logs files.
● Hit economy (Rogers 2002).
● From back to front end:
Hit, page, web, and visitor counters.
● Challenges: vague numbers | dealing with bots | spam build into counters.
● Javascript and tags | less vague numbers..
● Cookies | identify visits and visitors.
● Redistribution of analytics to 3rd parties.
● The more complex analytics became, the more it was moved to the back end again.
● Social media & their widgets bring counters back to the front ends.
● Friend/follower count | comments | views | Likes | rankings….
● Numbers as key elements of social media and platforms.
NUMBERS & THE POLITICS OF
PLATFORMS?
little attention has been paid to numbers within software and platform
studies | platforms politics | stakeholder relations | capacities to be
build upon
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● Grammars of action | Agre 1994 | collapse action and their capture.
● Challenges | interpretative flexibility & multiple meanings of grammars | van Dijck 2013.
● Numbers emerge as “enumerated entities” | Verran 2011.
#hashtag @username share
Accounting for numbers as elements of the politics of platformsHow are numbers involved in making of relations and between whom? | How are number situated in the multiple relations a platform needs to negotiate?
To which value regimes do they speak to? Do enumerated entities evaluate, valuate and valorise (Vatin 2013)?
YOUTUBE.COMAS CASE STUDY
3The demise of numbers on the video watch
page | numbers | actions | ecologies | public statistics
| analytics | passivity
Calculative devices on YouTube’s frontpage
relevance and recency | popularity | editorial |
recommendation | calculation
April 2006 October 2006 December 2006
The Rise and Demise of Numbers on YouTube’s Video Watch pageActions and enumerations are brought together
December 2007 July 2008 September 2009
Action prioritized over evaluation
March 2010 December 2011
Demise of numbers | Numbers and stakeholders
September 2012 July 2013
Numbers and users
September 2014-2015
In-platform engagement
April 29 2005
Calculative devices on the video frontpage
June 14 2005.
The relevance of recency
September 1 2005
June 14 2007
Differentiation of popularity
April 23 2009
October 9 2014
Editorial selections
April 06 2006 April 01 2009
Recommendation & the heterarchy of calculation
October 13 2009
April 26 2014
AFTER NUMBERSdifficulties in counting | rise and fall of numbers in front ends | multi-valent
numbers | heterarchy of value | suggestive numbers
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