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Algorithms and Intrusions: Emergent Stakeholder Discourses on the Co-option of Audiences’ Creativity and Data

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The Future of Audiences

Abstract

In the age of ubiquitous technologies, algorithmic agents pervade all aspects of our (online) lives. A growing number of connected digital devices track our activities and store our data on digital platforms or in the Cloud (Van Dijck 2014; Porcaro 2016). They give us recommendations for songs and movies, filter news or rank search results based on our past experiences (Bodo et al. 2017). This chapter focuses on the co-option of audiences’ digital production and data, as seen through the lens of stakeholders. Based on 15 interviews conducted with stakeholders from eight European countries, we show how this heterogenous community, consisting of players with different stakes, sees and evaluates the processes of co-option of audiences by digital platform owners, for their own purposes. The results highlight the dialectical nature of co-option and the sometimes conflicted relationship between commercial players and creative audiences, and show how this relationship is managed from both sides.

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Correspondence to Lucia Vesnić-Alujević .

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Vesnić-Alujević, L., Stehling, M., Jorge, A., Marôpo, L. (2018). Algorithms and Intrusions: Emergent Stakeholder Discourses on the Co-option of Audiences’ Creativity and Data. In: Das, R., Ytre-Arne, B. (eds) The Future of Audiences. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75638-7_6

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