The Human Translator: Expertise and Uncertainty in the Age of Automated Digital Advertisingenvironmental storytelling in art installation

Abstract

This article analyzes the fundamental transformation of the work of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) specialists in the context of increasing automation and algorithmic opacity (the so-called “black box”) in digital advertising. Based on a qualitative ethnographic study, the article explores how practitioners negotiate responsibility and expertise under conditions of systemic uncertainty. The findings indicate that the work of PPC specialists is evolving from a purely technical role into an interpretive and epistemic practice. Specialists are increasingly functioning as interpreters of algorithmic decisions, explaining their results to clients and managers in an effort to maintain the appearance of control over systems whose internal logic remains hidden. Tacit knowledge, based on intuition, emotional experience, and the collective construction of meaning within communities of practitioners (e.g., on forums), proves to be crucial to their functioning. This article introduces and develops the concept of algorithmic accountability as an epistemic practice—the everyday effort to make sense of, justify, and explain automated decisions in the face of structural ignorance.