Archiving, ordering and searching: search engines, algorithms, databases and deep mediatization

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

This article argues that search engines, algorithms, and databases can be considered as a way of understanding deep mediatization (Couldry & Hepp, 2016). They are embedded in a variety of social and cultural practices and as such they change our communicative actions to be shaped by their logic of archiving, ordering, and searching. I argue that that increasingly and in particular ways, search engines, algorithms and databases shape our everyday communicative actions as they make us think, internalize and act along the lines of their particular modes of communication action. After having briefly reviewed recent trends in mediatization research, the argument is discussed and unfolded in-between the material and social constructivist-phenomenological interpretations of mediatization. In conclusion, it is discussed how deep this form of mediatization can be taken to be.
Original languageEnglish
JournalMedia, Culture & Society
VolumeVol 40
Issue number8
Pages (from-to) 1135–1150
Number of pages15
ISSN0163-4437
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Nov 2018

ID: 187047503