Developing Literacy for Media Infrastructure

An Online Workshop to Understand the Mediation of Algorithm in Search Engines

Abstract

This study introduces the design and practice of a workshop that aims to develop media literacy for search engines, an everyday media infrastructure. Participants of this online workshop were shown data of their own pre-voting results and then worked in groups and developed algorithms for calculating rankings from the same data set. Quantitative analysis of the questionnaire revealed that through the workshop, the participants 1) became aware of the mediation of algorithms and 2) developed critical attitudes toward reliability and accuracy of search engine rankings. Furthermore, the qualitative analysis suggested that the workshop design, which allowed the participants to experience the sender’s role as well as recognize various alternatives through the group work, contributed to the development of infrastructure literacy.