ABSTRACT
Chapter Three, the materialities of search, presents and discusses a number of conceptual devices relevant for understanding the dominance and constitutive embeddedness of search and search engines in society. Three materially and technically consequential as well as theoretically and historically rich concepts – infrastructure, data, and algorithms – are used to explicate some of the underlying technical structure of search engines. The chapter concludes by framing the materiality of search through the development of the notion of information practices as sociomaterial, multiple, and situated.
