Computing the Social: How Capitalism and Taste Shape Computational Social Science
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Authors
Ak, Onurhan
Date
2025-01-30
Type
thesis
Language
eng
Keyword
Digital capitalism , Computational social science , Critical data studies , Cultures of computing
Alternative Title
Abstract
The contemporary prevalence of artificial intelligence and machine learning methods has resulted in a rich literature on the factors that shape computational research. Based on 24 months of digital ethnography of a university laboratory and in-depth interviews with its members, this dissertation makes two arguments. First, it asserts that disciplinary aesthetic orders are significant drivers of computational social scientists’ theorizations. These aesthetic attachments shape how social phenomena are conceptualized by computational social scientists. This has implications for how scholarship has linked algorithmic injustices to cultures of computing: providing social science education to platform designers may be insufficient by itself for creating just and equitable technologies. Second, this research highlights that computational social sciences are inextricably tied up with logics of capitalism, because social media platforms function as laboratories of ‘the social’: they selectively carve out sociality and transform it in order to make it knowable with computational methods. Social media platforms, in this context, do not merely serve as tools for research but actively manufacture the very objects of analysis, shaping the domain of the ‘social’ itself.
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Queen's University's Thesis/Dissertation Non-Exclusive License for Deposit to QSpace and Library and Archives Canada
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This publication is made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws without written authority from the copyright owner.
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
ProQuest PhD and Master's Theses International Dissemination Agreement
Intellectual Property Guidelines at Queen's University
Copying and Preserving Your Thesis
This publication is made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws without written authority from the copyright owner.
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International