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Estee_Beck_Diss_Final.pdf (1.84 MB)

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Computer Algorithms as Persuasive Agents: The Rhetoricity of Algorithmic Surveillance within the Built Ecological Network

Beck, Estee Natee
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1427314196

Abstract Details

2015, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, English (Rhetoric and Writing) PhD.
Each time our students and colleagues participate online, they face invisible tracking technologies that harvest metadata for web customization, targeted advertising, and even state surveillance activities. This practice may be of concern for computers and writing and digital humanities specialists, who examine the ideological forces in computer-mediated writing spaces to address power inequality, as well as the role ideology plays in shaping human consciousness. However, the materiality of technology—the non-human objects that surrounds us—is of concern to those within rhetoric and composition as well. This project shifts attention to the materiality of non-human objects, specifically computer algorithms and computer code. I argue that these technologies are powerful non-human objects that have rhetorical agency and persuasive abilities, and as a result shape the everyday practices and behaviors of writers/composers on the web as well as other non-human objects. Through rhetorical inquiry, I examine literature from rhetoric and composition, surveillance studies, media and software studies, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy. I offer a “built ecological network” theory that is the manufactured and natural rhetorical rhizomatic network full of spatial, material, social, linguistic, and dynamic energy layers that enter into reflexive and reciprocal relations to support my claim that computer algorithms have agency and persuasive abilities. I also address how computer code figures in digital surveillance environments on the web, as well as how to refigure digital rhetoric and literate practices through the built ecological network. My results help shift attention to the role rhetoric plays in materiality, and further implicates rhetoric as both under the realm of human and material activity.
Kristine Blair (Advisor)
Patrick Pauken (Other)
Sue Carter Wood (Committee Member)
Lee Nickoson (Committee Member)
190 p.
Composition; Literacy; Pedagogy; Rhetoric
computers and writing; rhetoric; rhetoric and writing; surveillance; tracking technologies; algorithmic surveillance; algorithmic ideology; built ecological network; object oriented rhetoric; persuasive computer algorithms; algorithmic agency

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Beck, E. N. (2015). Computer Algorithms as Persuasive Agents: The Rhetoricity of Algorithmic Surveillance within the Built Ecological Network [Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1427314196

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Beck, Estee. Computer Algorithms as Persuasive Agents: The Rhetoricity of Algorithmic Surveillance within the Built Ecological Network. 2015. Bowling Green State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1427314196.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Beck, Estee. "Computer Algorithms as Persuasive Agents: The Rhetoricity of Algorithmic Surveillance within the Built Ecological Network." Doctoral dissertation, Bowling Green State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1427314196

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

bgsu1427314196
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© 2015, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.