Emiliano Treré

How global workers, influencers, and activists develop tactics of algorithmic resistance by appropriating and repurposing the same algorithms that control our lives. Algorithms are all around us, permeating more and more aspects of our daily lives. While accounts of platform power tend to come across as bleak and monolithic, Algorithms of Resistance shows how people can resist algorithms across a variety of domains. Drawing from rich ethnographic materials and perspectives from both the Global North and South, authors Tiziano Bonini and Emiliano Trer explore how people appropriate and reconfigure algorithms to pursue their objectives in three domains of everyday life: gig work, cultural industries, and politics. They reveal how forms of algorithmic agency and resistance are endemic and mundane and how the platform society is a contested battleground of contrasting forces. Bonini and Trer begin by outlining their key theoretical framework of moral economies. This framework argues that algorithms exist on a continuum. At its two extremes are two competing moral economies: the user moral economy and the platform moral economy. From here, Algorithms of Resistance chronicles the various inventive ways that individuals can work to achieve agency and resist the ubiquitous power of algorithms. Casting a wide net with a diverse range of case studies, Bonini and Trer reveal the moral imperative for all of us--from delivery drivers to artists to social movements--to resist algorithms.

"The definitive book on the social, political, and economic dimensions of data." - Vincent Mosco, author of The Smart City in a Digital World "An essential handbook for those invested in reclaiming our digital space." - Payal Arora, author of The Next Billion Users and FemLab Co-Founder In an age of datafication, the systematic collection, analysis and exploitation of data impacts all aspects of our social lives. Crucially, there are winners and losers in this. From access to services, to the risk of being wrongfully targeted, to our very understanding of the social world and what we think matters in it. Data Justice is a cutting-edge exploration of the power relations that lay at the heart of our datafied lives. It outlines the intricate relationship between datafication and social justice, exploring how societies are, will, and should be affected by data-driven technology and automation. From data capitalism and data colonialism, to data harms and data activism – this book is an expert guide to the debates central to understanding the injustices of life in a datafied society. It is also an urgent and impassioned call to challenge and reimagine these injustices. To work collectively to achieve a fairer and more just future. Data Justice is an essential resource for anyone working and studying across critical data studies, and anyone interested in the social consequences of big data, smart technology and AI. Dr Lina Dencik, Dr Arne Hintz, Dr Joanna Redden and Dr Emiliano Treré are co-Directors of the Data Justice Lab at Cardiff University.

"The definitive book on the social, political, and economic dimensions of data." - Vincent Mosco, author of The Smart City in a Digital World "An essential handbook for those invested in reclaiming our digital space." - Payal Arora, author of The Next Billion Users and FemLab Co-Founder In an age of datafication, the systematic collection, analysis and exploitation of data impacts all aspects of our social lives. Crucially, there are winners and losers in this. From access to services, to the risk of being wrongfully targeted, to our very understanding of the social world and what we think matters in it. Data Justice is a cutting-edge exploration of the power relations that lay at the heart of our datafied lives. It outlines the intricate relationship between datafication and social justice, exploring how societies are, will, and should be affected by data-driven technology and automation. From data capitalism and data colonialism, to data harms and data activism – this book is an expert guide to the debates central to understanding the injustices of life in a datafied society. It is also an urgent and impassioned call to challenge and reimagine these injustices. To work collectively to achieve a fairer and more just future. Data Justice is an essential resource for anyone working and studying across critical data studies, and anyone interested in the social consequences of big data, smart technology and AI. Dr Lina Dencik, Dr Arne Hintz, Dr Joanna Redden and Dr Emiliano Treré are co-Directors of the Data Justice Lab at Cardiff University.

This book is an extensive investigation of the complexities, ambiguities and shortcomings of contemporary digital activism. The author deconstructs the reductionism of the literature on social movements and communication, proposing a new conceptual vocabulary based on practices, ecologies, imaginaries and algorithms to account for the communicative complexity of protest movements. Drawing on extensive fieldwork on social movements, collectives and political parties in Spain, Italy and Mexico, this book disentangles the hybrid nature of contemporary activism. It shows how activists operate merging the physical and the digital, the human and the non-human, the old and the new, the internal and the external, the corporate and the alternative. The author illustrates the ambivalent character of contemporary digital activism, demonstrating that media imaginaries can be either used to conceal authoritarianism, or to reimagine democracy. The book looks at both side of algorithmic power, shedding light on strategies of repression and propaganda, and scrutinizing manifestations of algorithms as appropriation and resistance. The author analyses the way in which digital activism is not an immediate solution to intricate political problems, and argues that it can only be effective when a set of favourable social, political, and cultural conditions align. Assessing whether digital activism can generate and sustain long-term processes of social and political change, this book will be of interest to students and scholars researching radical politics, social movements, digital activism, political participation and current affairs more generally.

This book is an extensive investigation of the complexities, ambiguities and shortcomings of contemporary digital activism. The author deconstructs the reductionism of the literature on social movements and communication, proposing a new conceptual vocabulary based on practices, ecologies, imaginaries and algorithms to account for the communicative complexity of protest movements. Drawing on extensive fieldwork on social movements, collectives and political parties in Spain, Italy and Mexico, this book disentangles the hybrid nature of contemporary activism. It shows how activists operate merging the physical and the digital, the human and the non-human, the old and the new, the internal and the external, the corporate and the alternative. The author illustrates the ambivalent character of contemporary digital activism, demonstrating that media imaginaries can be either used to conceal authoritarianism, or to reimagine democracy. The book looks at both side of algorithmic power, shedding light on strategies of repression and propaganda, and scrutinizing manifestations of algorithms as appropriation and resistance. The author analyses the way in which digital activism is not an immediate solution to intricate political problems, and argues that it can only be effective when a set of favourable social, political, and cultural conditions align. Assessing whether digital activism can generate and sustain long-term processes of social and political change, this book will be of interest to students and scholars researching radical politics, social movements, digital activism, political participation and current affairs more generally.