Resisting Algorithmic Determination: Becoming the Political Other in Blast Theory’s Operation Black Antler

Abstract

Resisting Algorithmic Determination: Becoming the Political Other in Blast Theory’s Operation Black Antler William W. Lewis (bio) So here I am, hiding behind a dumpster in a dirty alley in downtown Brighton. I’m doing my best to maintain my cover and make sure that the two people fifty yards ahead are not aware that they are being watched. I have been following these two for the past ten minutes since they slinked out of the pub. Obviously, they must have been trying to give my team the slip, knowing that we were getting too close to uncovering the truth. What can they be talking about I wonder and what is it that they are scheming? Something horrible I suspect. They are political extremists after all. With each move through the neighborhood, I begin to distrust them even more because they seemingly are not doing anything that should raise any suspicions. I’ve been tasked with finding out what cruel intentions Alice has up her sleeves, but all I have been able to tell so far is that she and her companion are having a leisurely stroll on a warm summer evening, telling jokes, and catching a moment to smoke a cigarette together. Surely there is more to this encounter, I’ve been told they are up to no good. Is my distrust unfounded? In the above experience, I was performing the role of covert agent tasked with profiling the behavior patterns of supposed political extremists in a theatrical performance based in role play. As part of this role play, levels of distrust, fear, and contempt for the political Other were amplified to justify my own actions. The experience opened up for me a sense of the ways algorithms embedded in digital media interactions condition my beliefs and daily behavior. It also caused me to question they ways these algorithms invisibly drive political messaging that determines how we perceive and behave toward those around us. Specifically, those of different political beliefs. Through algorithmic determination1 our politics are becoming primary identifiers framing entire social realities and the ways we perform within these frames. In an era where every digital interaction is tracked, analyzed, and recorded to manipulate our future behavior, it makes me question how we might resist? [End Page 49] Algorithmic processes have co-opted many elements of contemporary life, none more than the ways we perceive and communicate with one another online, and through those interactions how we form our political identities. As these processes harden and narrow these identities into specific rigid formations, we become programmed to be suspicious and untrusting of those who think and act differently, creating a social position of the political Other. Social media platforms are often heralded as the digital equivalent of the public square where dialogue helps create a healthy social sphere. In previous non-mediatized paradigms this social space offered an opportunity to create forms of social cohesion through acts of negotiation that might lead to communal understanding. In contrast, online platforms often disguise their underlying intentions—sorting, profiling, and social engineering for corporate profit—by co-opting the human desire to have a voice, to be seen, heard, and understood. Through this digital masking, what was once a tool for the public good has become a tool for the dissolution of social cohesion. Dialogue no longer becomes about reciprocation and listening and instead simply becomes a performance of who can speak louder. There also exists a paradigm of constant surveillance which, whether consciously understood or not, is breeding a sense of distrust and slowly eroding the capacity to empathize with those outside one’s personal political spheres. This paradigm is inherently social but brought about by an increasingly tight network of technological operations through the data-based aspects of mediatization. Embedded within late-stage capitalism, digitalization is causing more and more objects to be embedded with algorithmic systems and technologies2 trained to track and harvest user data via dataveillance.3 Researchers of media sociology refer to this as datafication.4 In the introduction to the 2019 special issue of TDR devoted to algorithms the editors describe algorithms as tools that “optimally organizes the intake of input and...