Automated culture: introduction

ABSTRACT

Automation has a long history in cultural production, but the contemporary moment presents a range of new possibilities and demands for the deployment of automated and autonomous systems in the shaping of our cultural and social worlds. The cultural implications of the deployment of automated systems for producing, curating, and distributing a growing range of cultural texts and artifacts extend beyond the realm of content to encompass their pace, rhythm, and scale. Understanding the significance of these shifts remains a central task for cultural studies research that builds on the field’s historical engagement with the entwinement of cultural practices, social relations, and power. This theme issue builds on the historical and recent concerns of cultural studies to provide a range of approaches to the cultural significance of automation. Given the scope of the transformations, the coverage of possible topics is indicative rather than exhaustive. The articles in this collection range across the realms of automated news curation, credit scoring, image curation, deep fakes, data science, the gig economy, and content moderation. They engage with possible responses to the real and potential pathologies of automation in the cultural realm – while highlighting the links between culture, politics, and economics. Taken together they develop a range of critical approaches to the sometimes creeping, sometimes galloping automation of cultural production, curation, and distribution. While stressing the moments of historical continuity with earlier forms of bureaucratic and administrative rationality, they simultaneously indicate that we are, in many ways, still in the very early stages of a process that is likely to encompass an expanding range of cultural practices and texts.

KEYWORDS:

• Automation
• culture
• Mechanical Turk
• FinTech
• social media
• data mining
• deep fakes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council [grant number: CE200100005].

Notes on contributors

Mark Andrejevic

Mark Andrejevic is Professor of Media Studies in the School of Media, Film, and Journalism at Monash University. He writes about digital media, surveillance, and popular culture and is the author of four books including, most recently, Automated Media.

Robbie Fordyce

Robbie Fordyce is from Aotearoa and is Lecturer in Big Data/Quantitative Analytics and Research Methods at the School of Media, Film, and Journalism at Monash University. He researches the exploits, manipulations and politics of rule-based systems and their cultures. In 2021, he published articles in Continuum, The International Journal of Children's Rights, Games and Culture, and other venues.

Luzhou Li

Luzhou Li is a lecturer in the School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University. Her research focuses on digital media studies, global media industries, media policy, political economy and media history, and Chinese media. Currently, she holds an early career research fellowship from the Australian Research Council to study Chinese social media platforms and platform governance.

Verity Trott

Verity Trott is Lecturer in Digital Media Research in the School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University. Her published research explores digital feminist activism, feminism in popular media, intersectionality online, online harassment and digital masculinities. Her research investigates the impacts of digital technology, AI and automation from a feminist and intersectional standpoint.