Programming the News: When Algorithms Come to Matter

Algorithmic power and politics stems in part from how algorithms acquire the capacity to disturb and to compose new sensibilities as part of situated practices, particularly in terms of how they become invested with certain political and moral capacities. Looking at how algorithms materialize in the institutional setting of the news media, the chapter considers how algorithms are made to matter. Based on field observations and 20 interviews with digital editors and managers at leading Scandinavian news organizations the chapter explores how institutional actors are responding to the proliferation of data and algorithms. The analysis shows how, on the one hand, news organizations feel the pressure to reorient their practices toward the new algorithmic logic governing the media landscape at large. On the other hand, algorithms work to disturb and question established boundaries and norms of what journalism is and ought to be.