The de-legitimation of Machine Learning Algorithms (MLAs) in “The Social Dilemma” (2020): a post-digital cognitive-stylistic approach

Abstract

Released on Netflix, the most popular algorithm-oriented streaming service, The Social Dilemma (TSD) is a vivid manifestation of how the recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Algorithms (MLAs) have turned both to new species of post-digital, semio-cognitive power. Premised on the conception of MLAs as non-human intermediaries, this research endeavor proposes a novel post-digital ethnography of technologically-mediated algorithmic contexts and takes the challenge of examining MLAs as distributed, contested, and unbounded figures in the filmic narrative of this Netflix production. For the purpose, the paper employs post-digital cognitive-stylistic analytical tools, geared by van Leeuwen’s (de)-legitimation strategies, to showcase how MLAs, as socio-technical actors, are semio-cognitively materialized through spatio-temporal, narrative-immersive de-legitimating patterns. The examination of algorithms as socio-technical imaginary agents fully integrated within sociotechnical assemblages yields insightful findings. Delving deep into the multiple “posts” in the post-digital milieu of the film, the analysis affords valuable results that reframe, rename, and de-legitimate MLAs’ performative agency that is not only procedural-computational, but is socio-technical, semio-discursive, and cognitive-stylistic as well.