Vassiliki Lazaridou

Committee

• Anastasia Katsaounidou, Assistant Professor, Ionian University
• Patricia Gerakopoulou, Assistant Professor, Ionian University
• Ioanna Kostarella, Associate Professor, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Summary

This dissertation proposal aims to establish, through an extensive literature review, a working definition of algorithmic culture, a concept developed over the past thirty years to incorporate interdisciplinary analyses concerning the influence of algorithms on contemporary communication as a result of rapid technological advancement.

The dissertation will consist of the following parts:

a) A classification of key concepts within the framework of the digital and social sciences, including: algorithms, computational systems, culture, connection/connectivity, digitality/embodiment, automation.

b) An attempt to trace the genealogy of automated communication, drawing on tools from behavioral psychology (for example user engagement), in interaction with the psychoanalytic “numbness” caused by the speed of technological innovation and acceleration (McLuhan, 1964).

c) A critical analysis of the socio-economic aspects of the above, treated as core components of algorithmic culture.

Finally, the research will explore tendencies of users of media technologies, and by extension of contemporary society at large, towards the midst of techno-optimism, a kin ideology to neo-niberalism. Using Kittlerian Media Discourse Analysis, as introduced in the translators’ foreword by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz to Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Kittler, 1986), and by applying qualitative research methods, this dissertation will investigate the impact of technological neoliberalism not only at the political, governmental, and institutional level, but also as a narrative embedded in everyday life.