Synthetic Actors II: Algorithms and Databases as Synthetic Actors

Session Submission Type: Traditional (Closed) Panel

Abstract

In particular situations or social settings, humans begin to encounter drones, robots, and even software algorithms as interaction partners. That is, they are being experienced, treated, or addressed as actors by everyday participants of, e.g., stock markets, robotics development labs, or UAV test facilities. This open session will be dedicated to theorizing empirical phenomena of this type. We do not intend to theoretically declare all material entities to be potential actants, or to frame all social conduct to be enmeshed into ‘ontologically flat’ actor-networks; such a move would render the particularity of these cases invisible. Instead, we aim to investigate synthetic situations (Knorr Cetina 2009) in which either screens or robotics afford the response presence of not only human interaction partners, but also software or machines. Actorship and the experience of being-in-interaction are thus tied to the situation, and are structured by its organization, temporality, and regime of attention. We call for empirical and theoretical papers investigating the forms, effects, structures, or problems of mediated, robotic, or synthetic situations that afford interaction or synthetic actors.

Sub Unit

• 4S Annual Meeting

Chair

• Niklas Woermann, University of Southern Denmark

Discussant

• Karin Knorr Cetina, University of Chicago

Individual Presentations

• Synthetic Situations and Algorithmic Phenomena - Elena Parmiggiani, NTNU; Eric Monteiro, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU); Thomas Østerlie, NTNU Social Research

• Synthetic Relationships: Affective Flexibility in the Diagnostic Genetics Laboratory - Chris Goldsworthy, Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, University of Oxford

• Approaching the Algorithmic Governance of HIV - Jeffrey Andrew Christensen, Tema T, Linköping University

• “How angels are made”: Ashley Madison and the Social Bot Affair - Tero Karppi, Department of Media Study, State University of New York at Buffalo