Artifact Analysis #1 800 words In anthropology an “artifact” is commonly defined as an object created by humans that gives some insight or understanding of the culture in which it was produced. For example, one of the obvious things an anthropologist might learn from looking at a car would be that the culture that produced it assumed family/social units were relatively small. This assignment asks you to describe and analyze an artifact from our algorithmic media culture. This could be anything ranging from a particular data visualization, a social media platform, a digital media text, a recommendation algorithm etc. The article on Spotify is a much more in-depth example of the kind of analysis you will do. Pick something that you are familiar with and then spend some time engaging with it carefully. Your analysis should be about 700 to 900 words long and should address the following areas: Description: What does this artifact look like? How do you access it and interact with it? What is its intended purpose etc. Also describe how you actually use/engage with this artifact. What aspects of your behavior does it see as relevant? What correlations do you think it’s making to identify patterns in your behavior and/or in your behavior relative to that of others? Take a look at the user agreement or terms and conditions of use for this artifact. What does it reveal about how your information will be used?Cultural uses: Find a few reviews or articles about this artifact that discuss its development, cultural uses or meanings etc. What do these sources tell you about the place of this artifact in our culture? Is it seen as part of an existing trend of challenging existing modes of thinking and acting?Analysis: Based on what you have learned from the two parts above, what do you think are the basic rules of the underlying algorithm for this artifact? What does studying this one artifact in some depth tell you about our cultural and social values? For example, what trade-offs (privacy, price, convenience, connection, power etc) do we make when we engage with this artifact? What kinds of values and behaviors are normalized? Does it encourage us to question any established cultural norms and assumptions?
