Critical Algorithmic Literacy

Critical Algorithmic Literacy explores the complexity of what it means to know algorithms and what such insight affords individuals, communities, and society. It suggests that critical algorithmic literacy involves understanding what algorithms do and why, but also what they mean to and for people as they navigate them in specific contexts. Drawing on a theoretical framework informed by feminist epistemologies, literacy studies, critical algorithm studies, and science and technology studies, the book illustrates how critical algorithmic literacy both shapes and is shaped by membership in different social worlds. Rather than as a value-neutral, universal skillset, it conceptualizes critical algorithmic literacy as relational, contextual, and socially situated. Through case studies of three communities entangled with algorithms in distinct ways, the book challenges prevailing visions of algorithmic literacy that privilege technical mastery and are driven by progress narratives serving powerful interests. It reorients critical algorithmic literacy around the goal of just social transformation, positioning it as a foundation for bottom-up governance.