Thesis abstract:

«p»The nature and function of online communities - and the social labor of their human mediators - are being intrinsically impacted by machine intelligence and algorithmic interventions. This thesis investigates the forces and actors composing Artificial Intelligence (AI) in an online community context; how the arrival, presence, and participation of machine actors' impact the experience of online community life; and how the logics and lenses of these machine assemblages help or hinder the internal logics of communities in their formation and maintenance. In particular, I examine the work of professional online community managers in this evolving order (an underexplored and underwritten 21st-century discipline), exploring the relational power of these sociotechnical intermediaries in applying, retooling and resisting machine intelligences in their practices.«/p»