The Infostructures of Social Media Platforms: Visibility, Moderation, and Algorithmic Choreography

• In Event: "Infostructuring": Information Control and Visibilities in Digital Spaces

Abstract

Social media platforms allow users to make themselves and their contributions visible. But they do not amplify equally; they are selective as to whom and what they grant visibility. This is handled by the ‘infostructures’ particular to social media platforms – search, recommendation, trends, tags, likes, friends, profiles. Algorithmic in their instrumentation, these are in fact assemblages of technical, human, and conceptual components. Together they subtly structure the flow of information, in ways more and less apparent to users. At the same time, as public, commercial intermediaries, social media platforms face social, legal, and self-imposed obligations to police their sites. Their content policies too are determinations about visibility – imposed in two ways: removal, where offensive content is erased, and quarantine, whereby it is channeled away. Some of these juridical efforts are enacted through those very same infostructures: mechanisms purportedly designed to deliver information to users, also channels information away from them.

Author

• Tarleton L. Gillespie, Microsoft Research