LAUSR

Academia is beholden to linguistic fashions. Knowing the “right” buzzwords moves things, interpellating a response from gatekeepers. For the last few years, it seems algorithms are in linguistic fashion. Critics across disciplines are making sense of the scale in which these complex technical processes structure our lives: that governments use them for predatory forms of policing (V. Eubanks 2018); insurance brokers to distribute access to lifesaving medical treatments (C. O’Neil 2016); search engines and social media platforms to assign visibility to content (Noble 2018). Discussing algorithms is productive (and profitable), affording success in academic publishing, procuring funding and grabbing the attention of policymakers. Just as “certain words stick to certain bodies” (S. Ahmed 2012, 62), the linguistic zeitgeist favours some speakers over others. Thus, in this special issue we ask: who gets to speak about algorithms? Who is listened to and who is ignored? Does the discussion of algorithms do things for everyone equally? This Special Issue has arisen from a one-day symposium we organised (in person!) in London in January 2020, called “Algorithms for Her?” The enormous and enthusiastic international response to our CFP underscored the multiple ways in which algorithms are clearly a feminist issue. We find that the contributions of those across intersections of women, scholars of colour, queer folk and the differently abled are markedly under-represented within the algorithmic canon. Although a body of scholarship that could loosely be called “critical algorithmic studies” is interested in revealing inequalities which are sustained and produced by algorithms, it is largely dominated by “principles-based approaches” such as “fairness, accountability and transparency” (M. Latzer and N. Just 2020, 9). We consider these worthy areas of study, but often find them lacking in their attention and commitment to social justice. The feminist approach we are advocating here would address this deficit. It would do so by paying attention to the specific experiential intersections of power, embodiment and visibility that are embedded in and facilitated by algorithmic mechanisms. Such an approach reveals the complexities and assumptions that an “equalities” approach brings to bear on the study and regulation of algorithmic systems of knowledge production. We can broadly define algorithms as “coded instructions that a computer needs to follow, to perform a given task” (T. Bucher 2018, 2). Algorithms are often designed and deployed by those with the authority to assign resources and visibility to others, often in obscure ways and with little (if any) accountability. We can think of algorithmic processes