Algorithmic Memory: How Recommendation Systems Reshape Collective Narratives Of Culture
Keywords:
Algorithmic memory, cultural narratives, digital platforms, recommendation systems, visibilityAbstract
This article examines how algorithmically driven recommendation systems on platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook reshape the dynamics of cultural memory and collective narrative formation in contemporary digital environments. Building on scholarship in digital memory studies—particularly the notion of a “connective turn” proposed by Andrew Hoskins (2011)—the study approaches memory as a continuously circulating process whose visibility increasingly depends on platform infrastructures that prioritize engagement, data extraction, and algorithmic ranking. Within these environments, the circulation of narratives is structured by mechanisms of amplification and suppression that can generate forms of algorithmic silence, whereby certain histories and perspectives remain marginal within digital networks not through explicit censorship but through limited visibility, selective ranking, and uneven patterns of circulation—extending the dynamics of historical silencing described by Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1995) within algorithmically mediated communication systems. Drawing on illustrative examples—including the asymmetrical visibility of narratives surrounding Ukraine and Palestine in global digital media ecosystems and the viral remixing of cultural traditions in the Algerian context—the analysis identifies three interrelated mechanisms through which algorithmic memory operates: amplification and erasure, commodification and datafication, and the reconfiguration of identity and belonging. Taken together, these dynamics demonstrate that recommendation systems function not merely as tools for organizing information but as socio-technical infrastructures that actively participate in shaping collective memory, producing new forms of algorithmic silence that influence what is remembered, forgotten, and politically recognized in digitally mediated societies.
References
Agamben, G. (2005). State of exception (K. Attell, Trans.). University of Chicago Press.
Amnesty International. (2024). Digital apartheid: How social media platforms silence Palestine. Amnesty International Report. https://www.amnesty.org
Amoore, L. (2020). Cloud ethics: Algorithms and the attributes of ourselves and others. Duke University Press.
Assmann, A. (2011). Cultural memory and Western civilization: Functions, media, archives. Cambridge University Press.
Bail, C. A., Argyle, L. P., Brown, T. W., Bumpus, J. P., Chen, H., Hunzaker, M. F., Lee, J., Mann, M., Merhout, F., & Volfovsky, A. (2018). Exposure to opposing views on social media can increase political polarization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(37), 9216–9221. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1804840115
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press.
Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Duke University Press.
Berlant, L. (2011). Cruel optimism. Duke University Press.
Boyd, D., & Crawford, K. (2012). Critical questions for big data. Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), 662–679. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2012.678878
Braidotti, R. (2013). The posthuman. Polity.
Bratton, B. H. (2015). The stack: On software and sovereignty. MIT Press.
Bucher, T. (2018). If… then: Algorithmic power and politics. Oxford University Press.
Chun, W. H. K. (2011). Programmed visions: Software and memory. MIT Press.
Chun, W. H. K. (2016). Updating to remain the same: Habitual new media. MIT Press.
Cinelli, M., Quattrociocchi, W., Galeazzi, A., Valensise, C. M., Brugnoli, E., Schmidt, A. L., Zola, P., Zollo, F., & Scala, A. (2020). The COVID-19 social media infodemic. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 16598. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-73510-5
Couldry, N., & Mejias, U. A. (2019). The costs of connection: How data is colonizing human life and appropriating it for capitalism. Stanford University Press.
Crawford, K., & Paglen, T. (2019). Excavating AI: The politics of images in machine learningtraining sets. Excavating AI. https://excavating.ai
Crawford, K. (2021). Atlas of AI: Power, politics, and the planetary costs of artificial intelligence. Yale University Press.
Cotter, K. (2023). Algorithms and the new media ecology: Platform power and the visibility of cultural content. Oxford University Press.
Dean, J. (2009). Democracy and other neoliberal fantasies: Communicative capitalism and left politics. Duke University Press.
Divya, S. B. (2021). Machinehood. Gallery/Saga Press.
Elish, M. C. (2016). Moral crumple zones: Cautionary tales in human–robot interaction. Engaging Science, Technology, and Society, 2, 40–60. https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2016.006
Erll, A. (2011). Memory in culture (S. B. Young, Trans.). Palgrave Macmillan.
Ferrando, F. (2019). Philosophical posthumanism. Bloomsbury Academic.
Erll, A. (2011). Memory in culture. Palgrave Macmillan.
European Parliament. (2022). Digital Services Act. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-services-act
Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge (A. M. Sheridan Smith, Trans.). Pantheon.
Fuchs, C. (2014). Social media: A critical introduction. Sage.
Gillespie, T. (2018). Custodians of the internet: Platforms, content moderation, and the hidden decisions that shape social media. Yale University Press
Gillespie, T. (2022). Custodians of the internet: Platforms, content moderation, and the hidden decisions that shape social media. Yale University Press.
Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. Routledge.
Haroon, M., Wojcieszak, M., Chhabra, A., Liu, X., Mohapatra, P., &Shafiq, Z. (2022). Auditing YouTube’s recommendation system for ideologically congenial, extreme, and problematic recommendations. Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT ’22), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3531146.3533151
Hayles, N. K. (1999). How we became posthuman: Virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. University of Chicago Press.
Hoskins, A. (2011). Media, memory, metaphor: Remembering and the connective turn. Parallax, 17(4), 19–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2011.605573
Hoskins, A. (2018). Digital memory studies: Media pasts in transition. Routledge.
Hoskins, A., & O’Loughlin, B. (2023). The new memory war: How the digital age is transforming remembrance and conflict. Polity Press.
Human Rights Watch. (2023, December 20). Meta: Systemic censorship of Palestine content. https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/20/meta-systemic-censorship-palestine-content
Iovino, S., & Oppermann, S. (Eds.). (2014). Material ecocriticism. Indiana University Press.
Jackson, Z. I. (2020). Becoming human: Matter and meaning in an antiblack world. NYU Press.
Kapchan, D. (2017). Sonic translations. In J. T. Koepnick & L. Richardson (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of sound and image studies (pp. 1–25). Oxford University Press.
O’Loughlin, B. (2023). The new memory war: How the digital age is transforming remembrance and conflict. Polity Press.
Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat? The Philosophical Review, 83(4), 435–450. https://doi.org/10.2307/2183914
Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of oppression: How search engines reinforce racism. NYU Press.
Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history: Les lieux de mémoire. Representations, 26, 7–24. https://doi.org/10.2307/2928520
Nussbaum, M. C. (2006). Frontiers of justice: Disability, nationality, species membership. Harvard University Press.
Pasquale, F. (2015). The black box society: The secret algorithms that control money and information. Harvard University Press.
Poell, T., Nieborg, D. B., & van Dijck, J. (2022). Platforms and cultural production. PolityPress.
Reading, A. (2023). The social media of memory: Digital practices of remembrance. Bristol University Press
Ribeiro, M. H., Ottoni, R., West, R., Almeida, V. A. F., & Meira, W. (2020). Auditin gradicalization pathways on YouTube. Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, 131–141. https://doi.org/10.1145/3351095.3372879
Ricoeur, P. (2004). Memory, history, forgetting (K. Blamey & D. Pellauer, Trans.). Universityof Chicago Press.
Rigney, A. (2018). Remembering hope: Transnational activism beyond the traumatic. Memory Studies, 11(3), 368–380. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698018771869
Srnicek, N. (2016). Platform capitalism. Polity.
Stiegler, B. (2010). Taking care of youth and the generations (S. Barker, Trans.). Stanford University Press.
Terranova, T. (2000). Free labor: Producing culture for the digital economy. Social Text, 18(2), 33–58. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-18-2_63-33
Trouillot, M.-R. (1995). Silencing the past: Power and the production of history. Beacon Press.
Tufekci, Z. (2015). Algorithmic harms beyond Facebook and Google: Emergent challenges of computational agency. Colorado Technology Law Journal, 13(1), 203–218.
van Dijck, J. (2007). Mediated memories in the digital age. Stanford University Press.
van Dijck, J. (2013). The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media. Oxford University Press.
Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., & Aral, S. (2018). The spread of true and false news online. Science, 359(6380), 1146–1151. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aap9559
Wolfe, C. (2010). What is posthumanism? University of Minnesota Press.
Wynter, S. (2003). Unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom: Towards thehuman, after man, its over representation—An argument. CR: The New Centennial
Review, 3(3), 257–337. https://doi.org/10.1353/ncr.2004.0015
Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. Public Affairs.
