Grassroots scaling up: Navigating algorithmic scales in a technopolitical landscape

Abstract

My theoretical aim in this article is to focus on an examination of processual enactments of scale in light of the technological affordances that are currently at the disposal of a significant majority of humans. I offer the terms algorithmic scales and algorithmic scalar affordances to describe one activist's engagement of practical theories of scale—her ‘algorithmic imagination’ (Bucher 2017)—which led her to design her audience in ways intended to algorithmically scale up, or amplify, her activities on Facebook—to enhance their spread numerically, rapidly, and translocally, making use of the algorithmically constructed communicative possibilities or affordances available to her on the site. (Social media, scale, algorithms, audience design, Facebook, activism, nation, politics)