Reconstruções de si na cultura do algoritmo do Facebook

Abstract

Memories, as well as recollections, forgettings and acts of silencing, have all been central elements of the experiences and impasses of the digital field and therefore of research and scientific debates. Within the scope of the individual and his autonomy to produce writings and rewritings of himself, the intertwining of personal and social cultural memories (VAN DIJCK, 2007) is the discussion in this work, in a context of ample presence and participation of media artifacts that solidify the emergence of increasingly hybrid subjectivity. This means that memories, which previously resulted from the articulation of one's own reconstruction of oneself added to the one of contact nodes in the social network and materials such as photos, letters, tickets, videos or audios, now, in the digital era, rely on the presence of several elements and objects, physical and/or symbolic, which make up the systems of the so-called culture of algorithms (STRIPHAS, 2015). This text builds itself from the perception that algorithms are the result of an economic and social and model that specialized a part of its technologies towards developing increasingly accurate and individualized reading, ordering, analysis and prediction through mathematical mechanisms of which social media platforms are only one of many facets (ZUBOFF, 2020; SILVEIRA, 2017; BRUNO, 2013). Then it goes on to question how the individual proposes to write himself in a mediation structure based on the culture of algorithm and how the structure of the network itself participates in the (re)construction of (auto)biographical memories. In terms of methodological scope, the work is focused on analyzing the possibilities made available by Facebook for the organization and representation of information, whether of a textual, visual or audiovisual nature, as well as the relationships individuals establish with such possibilities. Based on the perspective of the materialities of communication and media, the core of the work consists of the analysis [1] of the interface, recognizing it as a material manifestation of the algorithmic system (JOHNSON, 2007; VAN DIJCK, 2016), [2] of the institutional voice, collected in the Terms of Use documents, added to Facebook Research publications about services concerning memories, remembrances and selfmanagement and [3] the practices that develop them regarding the use of the platform regarding the ways of rewriting the self, the recognition of publications as interaction strategies and the presence of the algorithm in evoking memories. The analysis suggested that, although not exactly its initial function, Facebook points out ways for the individual to write himself, organize and store narratives as well as personal collections of memories. However, in terms of retrieval, representation, meaning attributions, these seem to improve in the offer of automated systems, not allowing the user the same freedom that the company has over the data generated by them.