Show Summary Details

Page of

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 17 April 2021

Abstract and Keywords

Filter systems are software tools which survey, select, prioritize, and predict information, items and users. Through their content and form, they shape behaviour by collecting individuals and items into similarity-based neighbourhoods. They limit choice and amplify past trends in the name of efficiency and desire. As technologies of organizing, filter systems are thus updating, and perhaps exacerbating, the organizational consequences of media technologies. This raises thorny questions: What are the ramifications of this kind of similarity-based categorization, and of its affectively charged zones? What (class-based, racial, gendered) aspects are factored into its parameters directly or indirectly through proxies?

Keywords: filter systems, filtering, echo chambers, recommendation systems, homophily, neighbourhoods, segregation, digital media, organization

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun

Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, Canada

Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.

Please subscribe or login to access full text content.

If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.

For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us.