Ranking and Rating
Discussion
Allison Hearn:
"A brief pre-history of ranking and rating Certainly, the most obvious precursor to the forms of reputation measurement systems arising now in the digital realm, at least in the sphere of cultural production, are best seller lists and popular music charts. While these lists and charts appear to simply count a song’s or book’s popularity measured in units sold, the mechanics, methodologies and interests behind their constitution generally remain clouded in mystery (Miller, 2000). Suffice it to say that, just as with the brand measurement systems, these lists serve the promotional interests of the book or music industries, work to discipline consumption, and function as forms of myth or self-fulfilling prophecy. The best-seller lists, for example, measure only the pace or intensity of sales, rather than the cumulative rate of sales over time and, therefore end up simply reflecting books that have been heavily promoted for a short period of time by publishers (Miller, 2000). The lists also have few, if any, protections from those business interests who would game the system by buying thousands of copies of books or albums, or, where rules tied to a professional association do exist, they are sufficiently opaque as to be easily thwarted. Nonetheless, these lists continue to serve as representations of popularity, as they appear to distill public sentiment into easily understood numbers and ratings, glossed as ‘science’, and work to build profitable reputation.
Indeed, lists and rankings of everything from bestselling novels, to universities, to Madonna’s boyfriends, could reasonably be classified as a contemporary cultural ‘craze’ in the West. The idiom of the list, Ernest Hakanen argues, allows us to locate ourselves within the social field. Their numeric shorthand not only helps us sort through the overwhelming world of commodities and services, speaking reassuringly in the language of science and statistics, but also helps us to position our tastes, beliefs, and level of success relative to other consumers; following Bourdieu, we could claim they work to generate cultural capital and new taste formations. The pursuit of cultural capital via a mastery of lists can easily be seen as a kind of affective and performative pre-history to the current pursuit of visibility, attention and personal reputation online. When we consume the list, rating or ranking, we simultaneously individuate and fit ourselves into the logic of the market; we find our ‘selves’ in the list (Hakanen, 2002).
But surely there is a meaningful difference between these industry-generated lists and the kinds of real-time interactive feedback mechanisms available to everyone online? Does the constitution of reputation change when mediated by digital technologies and social networks?"