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research article

Linguistic Capitalism and Algorithmic Mediation

Kaplan, Frédéric  
2014
Representations

Google’s highly successful business model is based on selling words that appear in search queries. Organizing several million auctions per minute, the company has created the first global linguistic market and demonstrated that linguistic capitalism is a lucrative business domain, one in which billions of dollars can be realized per year. Google’s services need to be interpreted from this perspective. This article argues that linguistic capitalism implies not an economy of attention but an economy of expression. As several million users worldwide daily express themselves through one of Google’s interfaces, the texts they produce are systematically mediated by algorithms. In this new context, natural languages could progressively evolve to seamlessly integrate the linguistic biases of algorithms and the economical constraints of the global linguistic economy.

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Type
research article
Author(s)
Kaplan, Frédéric  
Date Issued

2014

Publisher

University of California Press

Published in
Representations
Volume

127

Issue

1

Start page

57

End page

63

Subjects

Linguistic Capitalism

•

Algorithms

•

Algorithmic Mediation

•

textmining

•

read-write

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
DHLAB  
Available on Infoscience
August 13, 2014
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/105500
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