Episode 30: Voting With the Algorithm

This is Episode 30 of the State of the Theory Podcast. Politics. Power. Popular Culture. And other stuff, probably. In this series, we’re like super nerdy philosophical DJs: mashing up Serious Academic Questions with the most topical news and trends in pop culture. Each week, we’ll tackle a new topic and collide it with ‘critical theory’ (we’re pretty loose with our definitions, though, so expect the unexpected). Our aim is to destroy the stuff we know, explore the stuff we don’t and unsettle everything we think we know about the world. We take the obvious, the commonsensical, the certain, and then we rip it all to shreds. We are your theory doctors and we are always on call. In this episode, we look back at the US Presidential elections, and think about the role played by Social Media and Algorithms in voting behaviour. The Guardian article we mention can be found here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/10/facebook-fake-news-election-conspiracy-theories The Medium.com article can be found here: https://medium.com/@erinpettigrew/how-facebook-saw-trump-coming-when-no-one-else-did-84cd6b4e0d8e#.q0ts8k4va The SNL sketch can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeAvTLq-MIc Our theme music is "The Face of God" by The Agrarians (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/The_Agrarians/The_Jovial_Shepherd/The_Face_of_God) State of the Theory is brought to you by Hannah Fitzpatrick and Anindya Raychaudhuri Find us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/stateofthetheorypodcast) or Tweet us @drhfitz and @DrAnindyaR