Referierte Beiträge (19)
- . (2023). European Search? How to counter-imagine and counteract hegemonic search with European search engine projects. Big Data Soc, 10, ARTN 20539517231163173. doi:10.1177/20539517231163173
- . (2023). Advancing search engine studies: The evolution of Google critique and intervention. Big Data Soc, 10, ARTN 20539517231191528. doi:10.1177/20539517231191528
- . (2021). Future imaginaries in the making and governing of digital technology: Multiple, contested, commodified. New Media And Societyspecial Issue: “We Are On A Mission”. Exploring Future Imaginaries In The Making And Governing Of Digital Technology., 23, 223-236. doi:10.1177/1461444820929321
- . (2020). Algorithmic Profiling of Job Seekers in Austria: How Austerity Politics Are Made Effective. Frontiers In Big Data, Special Issue Critical Data and Algorithm Studies, 17. doi:10.3389/fdata.2020.00005
- . (2019). Body data-data body: Tracing ambiguous trajectories of data bodies between empowerment and social control in the context of health. Momentum Quarterly, 8, 95-108. doi:10.15203/momentumquarterly.vol8.no2.p95-108
- . (2019). Zur Definition der Ideologie des Algorithmus: Kommerzielle Suchmaschinen im Licht der Ideologiekritik. Maske Und Kothurn, 64, 107-127. doi:10.7767/mako.2018.64.1-2.107
- . (2019). Book Review: Ann Rudinow Sætnan, Ingrid Schneider, and Nicola Green (2018): The Politics of Big Data. Big Data, Big Brother?. Information, Communication And Society, 22, 1523-1525. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2019.1567804
- . (2018). Internet governance as joint effort: (Re)Ordering search engines at the intersection of global and local cultures. New Media &Amp; Society, 20, 3657-3677. Retrieved from https://epub.oeaw.ac.at/ita/ita-papers/internet-governance-as-joint-effort.pdf
- . (2017). Search engine imaginary: Visions and values in the co-production of search technology and Europe. Social Studies Of Science, 47, 240-262. Retrieved from https://epub.oeaw.ac.at/ita/ita-papers/search-engine-imaginary.pdf
- . (2014). Ideologie des Algorithmus. Wie der neue Geist des Kapitalismus Suchmaschinen formt. In B. Stark, Dörr, D., & Aufenanger, S. (Eds.), Die Googleisierung der Informationssuche. Suchmaschinen zwischen Nutzung und Regulierung (pp. 201-223). Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter. Retrieved from https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110338218/html?lang=de
- . (2014). Defining Algorithmic Ideology: Using Ideology Critique to Scrutinize Corporate Search Engines. Triplec: Communication, Capitalism &Amp; Critique, 12. Jg. – 2014, 28-39. Retrieved from http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/439/523WebseiteRISENWBIB Kurzfassung
This article conceptualizes “algorithmic ideology” as a valuable tool to understand and critique corporate search engines in the context of wider socio-political developments. Drawing on critical theory it shows how capitalist value-systems manifest in search technology, how they spread through algorithmic logics and how they are stabilized in society. Following philosophers like Althusser, Marx and Gramsci it elaborates how content providers and users contribute to Google’s capital accumulation cycle and exploitation schemes that come along with it. In line with contemporary mass media and neoliberal politics they appear to be fostering capitalism and its “commodity fetishism” (Marx). It further reveals that the capitalist hegemony has to be constantly negotiated and renewed. This dynamic notion of ideology opens up the view for moments of struggle and counter-actions. “Organic intellectuals” (Gramsci) can play a central role in challenging powerful actors like Google and their algorithmic ideology. To pave the way towards more democratic information technology, however, requires more than single organic intellectuals. Additional obstacles need to be conquered, as I finally discuss.
- . (2013). Technoscientific Promotion and Biofuel Policy: How the press and search engines stage the biofuel controversy. Media, Culture &Amp; Society, 35, 454-471. doi:10.1177/0163443713483794
- . (2012). Algorithmic Ideology. How capitalist society shapes search engines. Information, Communication &Amp; Society. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2012.676056DOIWebseiteRISENWBIB Kurzfassung
This article investigates how the new spirit of capitalism gets inscribed in the fabric of search algorithms by way of social practices. Drawing on the tradition of the social construction of technology (SCOT) and 17 qualitative expert interviews it discusses how search engines and their revenue models are negotiated and stabilized in a network of actors and interests, website providers and users first and foremost. It further shows how corporate search engines and their capitalist ideology are solidified in a socio-political context characterized by a techno-euphoric climate of innovation and a politics of privatization. This analysis provides a valuable contribution to contemporary search engine critique mainly focusing on search engines’ business models and societal implications. It shows that a shift of perspective is needed from impacts search engines have on society towards social practices and power relations involved in the construction of search engines to renegotiate search engines and their algorithmic ideology in the future.
- . (2012). Search Engines Matter: From educating users towards engaging with online health information practices. Policy &Amp; Internet, 4.RISENWBIB Kurzfassung
While the internet is often discussed as empowering or endangering patients due to broadening access to medical and health-related information, little is known about the way patients actually get informed about medical conditions and how the technology shapes their practices. This article draws on 40 user observations and 40 qualitative interviews to explore how users employ the web to obtain knowledge about a chronic disease in the Austrian context. Following concepts from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) it elaborates how users’ individual medical preferences and search engines’ mechanisms of pre-filtering information co-shape online health information practices. This analysis exemplifies that search engines are no passive intermediaries, but rather actively shape how users browse through, select and evaluate health information in the context of their own bodies of knowledge. Accordingly, new skills are required on the part of users, but also on the part of medical professionals and policy makers. Both policy makers and doctors are invited to engage with users’ highly individual search practices and establish more dialogue-oriented and technology-focused health policy measures, rather than trying to educate users with standardized quality criteria for websites not responding to users’ online routines and needs, as will be finally concluded.
- . (2012). Health information politics: Reconsidering the democratic ideal of the Web as a source of medical knowledge. First Monday, 17. doi:10.5210/fm.v17i10.3895
- . (2012). Book review: Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka (eds.) Media Archaeology. Approaches, Applications, and Implications. Information, Communication And Society, 16, 1009-1012. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2012.722224
- . (2009). Mediated Health. Sociotechnical practices of providing and using online health information. New Media &Amp; Society, 11, 1123-1142. Retrieved from http://nms.sagepub.com/content/11/7/1123.abstractWebseiteRISENWBIB Kurzfassung
While most of the existing research about online health information focuses exclusively on either the provider or the user side of communication circuits, this article aims to integrate and discuss both sides and their mediated relation to one another. Drawing on actor-network theory, it conceptualizes the provision and use of online health information as sociotechnical. It questions concretely how website providers position their websites and information, how users browse through the web and assemble information, and interrogates the various concepts of online health information these different practices imply. Further, it asks how search engines, and Google in particular, come to play such a dominant role in the way health-related web information is provided and used. The article concludes by evaluating the implications of the findings in regard to debates about the quality of online health information and the way in which web information is distributed and acquired on a broader scale.
- . (2009). Shaping the future e-patient: The citizen-patient in public discourse on e-health. Science Studies, 22, 24-43. Retrieved from http://www.sciencetechnologystudies.org/system/files/Felt_et_al.pdfWebseiteDownloadRISENWBIB Kurzfassung
This paper investigates how public discourses, as articulated in EU policy and Austrian media documents, take part in the creation and stabilisation of a new patient figure – the e-patient. The documents we analysed act as one material form for enacting, performing and giving meaning to the changes occurring when a new technology enters established networks in the medical realm. Our analysis will show that the public discourses we studied deploy three rather different forms of discursive registers, each of which address and perform a specific relation between currently new information and communication technologies and citizen-patients. From one place, moment or problem-solution package to the next a slightly different hybrid and ‘multiple citizen-patient’ is being shaped, discussed, observed or concealed. The multiplicity we observed reveals crucial tensions and contradicting expectations expressed towards the future citizen-patient, showing the challenges for e-health in the making.
- . (2008). Visions and versions of governing biomedicine: narratives on power structures, decision-making, and public participation in the field of biomedical technologies in the Austrian context. Social Studies Of Science, 38, 233-257. Retrieved from http://sss.sagepub.com/content/38/2/233.abstractWebseiteRISENWBIB Kurzfassung
In recent years, governance and public participation have developed into key notions within both policy discourse and academic analysis. While there is much discussion on developing new modes of governance and public participation, little empirical attention is paid to the public's perception of models, possibilities and limits of participation and governance. Building on focus group data collected in Austria within the framework of a European project, this paper explores lay people's visions and versions of government, governance and participation for two biomedical technologies: post-natal genetic testing and organ transplantation. Building on this analysis, we show that people situate their assessments of public participation against the background of rather complex lay models of the governance and government of the respective technology. Because these models are very different for the two technologies, participation also had very different connotations, which were deeply intertwined with each socio-technical system. Building on these findings we argue for a more technology-sensitive approach to public participation.