Algorithmic Authenticity: An Overview

by Anthony Glyn Burton, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun

What makes information feel true or compelling in our contemporary digital societies? This book brings together different disciplinary understandings of "authenticity" in order to find alternative ways to approach mis- and disinformation that go beyond contemporary fact-checking and its search for the "authentic" truth. Patterned under the algorithmic flows of digital capitalism, authenticity itself is subject to variation, iteration, and outside influence. Linking cross-disciplinary research on the history and practices of algorithmic authenticity points to new research questions to understand the impact of algorithmic authenticity on social life and its role in contemporary information disorder.

140 pages, Paperback

Published July 3, 2023

Reviews

[Miha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Explored counterculture, post-modern epistemics, WWE, reality tv, and micro-celebrity branding to analyze the idea that authenticity—rather than being a, reflexive, egosyntonic alignment between appearance, doing, and inner self— bound within the algorithmic circuits (e.g, technological, ideological, and discursive structures) that condition the performance, authentication, and affective relations of life.

Breaking from the notion of a singular ‘I’, authenticity emerges within the networks we inhabit as patterned (i.e, iterable/consistent) performances for an authenticating audience/algorithm.

Maybe also relevant to consider Peter Sloterdijk’s analysis of melancholy and “nobjects”….”where there was disconsolation, there will now be media performance” (p. 470).