Autoethnographic research in university: a form of resistance to algorithmic governmentality

Abstract

The modulation of behaviors (Deleuze, 2006) must be thought at present within the framework of algorithmic
governmentality. To understand and modify the forms of subjectivation of algorithmic culture, it is necessary to
analyze the practices that the attention economy and engineering generate through the smartphone (Touza,
2020) and rethink how the technologies of the self-operate within this framework (Foucault, 1990). In this sense,
I present and base an autoethnographic research process on digital culture in the Bachelor of Social
Communication (UNCuyo) carried out during the first semester of 2022. Through a series of decentering

exercises framed in the final practical work, the research The purpose of the autoethnographic study was for
university students to denature and objectify their own practices -individual and group- with digital media in order
to reconsider possible collective transformations in the modes and rhythms of attention. Some of the challenges
involved in researching digital culture will be introduced, particularly starting undergraduate students in their first
experiences in the Seminar on Informatics and Society. In addition, the autoethnographic research proposal
(Chang, 2008) articulated to the matter will be presented and described. Finally, the results of the process will be
presented: the partial denaturation of the practices with the mobile phone, the validity and limitations of the
perspective of the technologies of the self to think about digital culture and the affective tensions and
ambivalences in the transformations in the ways of subjectivation resistant to algorithmic governmentality.