Sutherland, Thomas and Wark, Scott. 2024. (Re)search results: Search engines and the logic of efficiency in scholarship. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, ISSN 1600-910X [Article] (In Press)

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Abstract or Description

This article uses the search engine as a heuristic for reflecting upon the extent to which knowledge production within the academy both shapes and is shaped by the media that it studies and with which its research is enabled. More specifically, it argues that the efficiency that has helped make search both a paradigmatic feature of digital culture and a habitual, everyday activity is achieved not just through speediness of results, but through a rationalized, regimented, and standardized structuration of knowledge, ensuring the latter is amenable to computational processing and retrieval. Search engines exercise a crypto-normative function, establishing formal norms and constraints relating to knowledge production, including academic research outputs, at the same time that they furnish one of the principal means by which this research is conducted. The purpose of this article is not to decry bureaucratic modes of conduct (the bureaucratic-rationalist ethos being central to the responsibilities of academic life), but to stress the importance of scholars reflecting upon their own relationship to the technologies of which they make use and the temporalities these technologies engender.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	media theory, knowledge, efficiency, search engines, scholarship, digital culture, normativity
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Visual Cultures
Dates:	Date Event 26 April 2024 Accepted
Item ID:	36089
Date Deposited:	29 Apr 2024 11:55
Last Modified:	30 Apr 2024 01:22
Peer Reviewed:	Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/36089

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