User:Joca/rw rm 25042018

Plan de campagne

I want to use this day to start with the essay on the media object, because I think that the media object can help me as a tool of reflection for the special issue. I am interested in ways to explore a digital collection by serendipity, instead of looking up specific books by their title or the MD5 hash of the file. In that context and related to my previous research, I find it interesting to look at the non-human librarian present in interfaces that people use to access information. There are many forms of this non-human librarianship, like search box with auto complete, or a chat bot that gives advice. In my media essay I'd like to focus however on the recommendation engine: the part of the page we know from Amazon ("people who bought book X also bought Y), to Youtube (next recommended video playing in 10 seconds). This is quite a simple element on the first look, but the mechanisms to offer recommendations changed a lot over time: using hand curated titles, or algorithms based on specific types of data. I think that further research on this object can give me more insights on ways to let people explore a collection, and teach me about the pitfalls of certain methods to offer this functionality.

During the first part of the day I want to make a bibliography of articles that I can use for the essay on the media object. For each article I will make an abstract. During the holidays I will start making synopses of these articles, which I can use as components of my future essay on the media object.

Next to the bibliography and the abstracts, I want to have a reflection about the research done today and how it informed my work for the special issue. Based on that I define some next steps for the project. I plan on starting with the reflection about 1 or 2 hours before the deadline of 17:00 today.

Outcomes

Bibliography

“Fiction is outperforming reality”: how YouTube’s algorithm distorts truth.

Lewis, P. (2018, February 2). “Fiction is outperforming reality”: how YouTube’s algorithm distorts truth. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/02/how-youtubes-algorithm-distorts-truth

Abstract

A critical article about the recommendation system of Youtube that is built to optimize the watch time of users, but has a bias towards problematic content like extreme violence and conspiracies as a side effect. The description of the mechanisms behind the system are based on the experiences of Guillaume Chauslot one of the engineers who developed it.