How algorithmic systems participate in the joint construction of meaning on the environment

My research explores how the ongoing digitisation of society shapes how individuals and collectives see, understand, discuss, and address the environment at large and concrete environmental issues. I aim to explore how algorithmic systems participate in the joint construction of meaning on the environment, or in other words, how digitised intermediaries shape how contemporary societies co-construct environmental ideals, values, or knowledge. My research is thus firmly placed in Environmental Communication scholarship but, at the same time, inherently interdisciplinary as it draws on among others information studies, sociology, and science and technology studies. Theoretically, this work aims to bring the environment into research on digitisation, and to bring a critical view on digitisation into the wider environmental social sciences.

Algorithms are a central part of our contemporary, thoroughly digitised society. To date, my research has primarily concerned the role of public-facing algorithmic information systems, such as search engines or social media platforms, for our understanding of and relation to the environment. In this context, algorithms can be understood as machine instructions that determine which data are visible and which are not; for example, search engine algorithms determine “relevant” search results, thus shaping what we see when we search for “climate crisis” or “sustainable travelling”. More generally, algorithms filter, select, sort, and extrapolate information. Just like humans, algorithms are not neutral because they are bound to favour some perspectives over others. In doing so, algorithms reproduce a version of society carried forward through the assumptions of developers, the limitations of data, and the imaginaries of users. Algorithms thus contribute to how people and societies understand and create meaning on the environment and on how different environmental issues ought to be seen, understood, discussed, and addressed. Algorithms have implications for societal discourses, norms, and social practices and their environmental connotations.

In this presentation, I first detail how algorithms can be understood to participate in the joint construction of meaning on the environment in line with the outline above. Next, I discuss the methodologies I use to study algorithmic systems, often making use of mixed methods research design drawing on qualitative, digital humanities, and computer-aided methods, as well as using creative experimentation and interventions to explore the (im)possibilitiy of alternatives within digitised societies.

Thereafter, I detail examples from past work. Among others, I discuss a study on “nature selfies” and how they are shaped by social media platforms. For this, we investigated “nature selfies” on three different platforms, analysed the role and (re)presentation of nature within these, and together with colleagues experimented whether “nature selfies” could be different. Another study I present investigated the ways in which a Swedish climate obstruction network manipulates online search by suggesting specific keyphrases to “google”. In this study, we follow these keyphrases through different media—blogs, newspapers, and search engines—and compare them conceptually and empirically to clickable hyperlinks. Other work on algorithms that I was involved in explores how search engines, recommender systems, or generative AI shape how environmental concerns can be ignored or “not known”, or how they create a high-carbon understanding of the world.

In the final part of the presentation, I outline future research aims and ideas. These include theorisation of algorithmic systems and datafication within environmental communication scholarship; how changes in the algorithms of large online-platforms shape how and with whom environmental issues could be discussed in the last decade; or how datafication and modelling in natural resource management and land-use contexts (e.g. forestry planning, water monitoring, livestock management) shapes human/nature relationships.