Coffee with the Algorithm : Imaginaries, maintenance and care in the everyday life of a news-ranking algorithm

This chapter seeks to make sense of automated decision-making and the role of humans in it by zooming in on imaginaries of algorithmic automation and the socio-institutional practices these were embedded in, in the everyday life of a news-ranking algorithm. The study is set in the newsroom of a Swedish daily. Algorithms are understood as culture, as unstable and developed through a variety of imaginaries and social practices that people in institutions employ and engage in when navigating algorithmic automation. One such practice was Algorithm Coffee; involving regular meetings to discuss the working and potential bettering of the algorithm. Imaginaries revolved around technological solutionism, how the algorithm could solve the newspaper’s problem with profitability by automating tasks previously undertaken manually by an editor. Nevertheless, the algorithm was labelled editor-led, allowing human editors to still oversee some of its parameters. Thus the algorithm did not interfere with journalisms’ imagined democratic purpose. By attending to everyday social dynamics around the news-ranking algorithm, the chapter underlines how algorithms are caught up within a set of relations through which the meaning and boundaries of algorithmic automation is negotiated. Therefore, the chapter argues that the everyday impacts automation as much as automation impacts the everyday