“E aí, google, como que faz?”: das lógicas algorítmicas racializadas no motor de buscas aos sentidos postos em circulação por atores sociais em redes sócio-digitais

Abstract

The algorithms of culture (Ferreira, 2020) are agents of mental experiences materialized in culture, highlighting the logics of racialization, operationalized by branquitude (Bento, 2002; Campos, 2023; Cardoso, 2011; Ramos, 1995; Schucman, 2020) , and the Afro-referenced logics of resistance, which emerge as responses to the racism present in society. Mediatization as a reference interactional process (Braga, 2006) reconfigured social interactions, expanding discursive spaces, but also provided new forms of racial oppression, such as those produced and reproduced in the online environment by digital algorithms. Given this, this dissertation aims to investigate the algorithmic logics installed in culture and digital media, from the perspective of mediatization, based on the circulation of meanings as a space for tension or reification of stigmatizing and racialized logics present in public space. The construction of the research case was developed based on episodes of delivery of racialized search results taken from the Google search engine. The research is based on the abductive method (Ferreira, 2012) and uses the mediatized case study as a methodology (Weschenfelder, 2020). The cases of algorithmic racism present in the Google search engine are mobilizing hypotheses, producing questions such as how the production of meanings generated by the algorithmic logics of the Google search engine, based on the delivery of racialized search results and put into question media circulation, activate Afro-referenced circuits, registered on different digital platforms, and journalistic media? How do Afro-referenced circuits and journalistic media pressure Google to change these results? The circulation of meanings (Fausto Neto, 2013; Ferreira, 2013; Rosa, 2019) exposes practices of resistance to these racial oppressions produced on Google by racial biases instilled in digital algorithms, with circulation promoting social values (Rosa, 2019). In view of this, the mediatization process, together with the historical actions of black movements as educational and political agents (Gomes, 2019), was central to the emergence of widespread racial literacy initiatives in society. From this, the configuration of Afro-referenced circuits has resistance and denunciation of racialization logics on digital platforms as a social response to confront media institutions that promote racialized algorithmic logics.