Article:

Queerying Homophily. Muster der Netzwerkanalyse

The fact that networks create ‹echo chambers› or ‹filter bubbles› has become a truism. Personalization allegedly has destroyed commonality – if not democracy. To understand how network algorithms fragment, this chapter examines a fundamental axiom of network science: homophily, the principle that similarity breeds connection. Homophily fosters the breakdown of seemingly open and boundless networks into a series of poorly-gated communities, a disintegration that the agent-based market logic embedded within most capture systems accelerates. If networks segregate, it is because network analyses rest on and perpetuate a reductive identity politics, which posits race and gender as “immutable” categories and love as inherently «love of the same.» To face this challenge, this essay highlights and engages with the ‹performative› nature of networks. Networks repeatedly enact what they claim only to describe. Rather than decry this as deceptive, what would happen if we took seriously this fundamental performativity and built systems that acknowledged the fluidity of identity and networks?