European Journal of Cultural Studies· 2015Q1
Curation by code: Infomediaries and the data mining of taste
- 218citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2015year
Short summary
Algorithms and data mining by "infomediaries" like The Echo Nest are increasingly shaping audience experiences and taste in popular music, shifting cultural intermediation from human experts to computational power.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Automated recommendation systems are central to media circulation.
- Infomediaries (e.g., The Echo Nest) use algorithms and data mining to shape cultural experiences.
- This represents a shift from human cultural intermediaries to computational power.
- Algorithmic curation has significant social implications for taste-making and audience manufacture.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Automated recommendation systems now occupy a central position in the circulation of media and cultural products. Using music as a test case, this article examines the use of algorithms and data mining techniques for the presentation and representation of culture, and how these tools reconfigure the process of cultural intermediation. Expanding Bourdieu’s notion of cultural intermediaries to include technologies like algorithms, I argue that an emerging layer of companies – call them infomediaries – are increasingly responsible for shaping how audiences encounter and experience cultural content. Through a critical analysis of The Echo Nest, a music infomediary whose databases underpin many digital music services, I trace the shift from intermediation to infomediation and explore what is at stake at the intersection of data mining, taste making and audience manufacture. The new infomediary logics at work are computational forms of power that shape popular culture and highlight the social implications of curation by code.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 2015 · DOI ↗
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Field: Music
MusicArts and Humanities