ABSTRACT
Sorting algorithms order interactions in social media environments, making the complex world simpler for end users. Companies like Facebook, in employing sorting algorithms for tasks such as displaying important stories and news, have considerable power in shaping the world. This chapter theorizes how agency flows among companies, their algorithms, and users, considering the responsibility of algorithms in Facebook’s “fake news” problem of 2016. Networked agency is social and shared. Algorithms channel the rhetorical power of arrangement, albeit power constrained by the programming of human designers. Algorithms, programmers, users, and content creators all shape the flow of information in networked environments.
