Critical Algorithmic Literacy: From Everyday Knowledge to Bottom-Up Governance

Author/Contributor(s):	Cotter, Kelley
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Date:	12/22/2026
Binding:	Paperback
Condition:	NEW

Critical Algorithmic Literacy explores the complexity of what it means to know algorithms and what such insight affords individuals, communities, and society. It challenges the idea that algorithmic literacy only includes technical competencies and is primarily important for its role in accelerating technological innovation across society. Instead, it understands critical algorithmic literacy as valuable for supporting everyday people in individual, collective, and institutional efforts to ensure algorithms function fairly. It illustrates these ideas through three case studies of online communities^--^a network of leftist YouTubers and their audiences, Instagram influencers, and the fat liberation movement on TikTok^--^each with their own respective interests in algorithms.