Introduction
• technological redlining and algorithmic oppression
• big data and algorithms are anything but benign, neutral, or objective
• “glitches” don’t suggest that the “organizing logics of the web” are broken, but instead something just going wrong with a “near-perfect system.”
• “Google’s position is that it is not responsible for its algorithm.”
Searching for Black Girls
• lack of diversity framed as “pipeline” issues in hiring, instead of racism and sexism
• “search engine results perpetuated particular narratives that reflect historically uneven distributions of power in society.” (71)
• theories of racial formation vs. theories of structural white supremacy (79)
• “white supremacy as the dominant lens and structure through which sense-making of race online can occur” (84). “just google it.”
• “Google/Alphabet is a broker of cultural imperialism that is arguably the most powerful expression of media dominance on the web we have yet to see.” (86)
• “contextualize information as a form of representation, or cultural production, rather than as seemingly neutral and benign data that is thought of as a ‘website’ or ‘URL’ that surfaces to the top in a search.” (106)
Searching for People and Communities
• “cloaked websites”
• “search results belie any ability to intercede in the framing of a question itself” (116)
• “search engine results also function as a type of personal record and as records of communities” (116)