The social power of algorithms

“Here, we see the role of algorithms, as decision-making parts of code (see Beer, 2013, p. 65), as being analytic and decisive (for a discussion of the role of algorithms in data analytics, see Kitchin, 2014, pp. 100–112).”

“As Beer (2017) attests, when thinking about the power of an al-gorithm, we need to think beyond the impact and consequences of the code, to the powerful ways in which notions and ideas about the al-gorithm circulate throughout the social world.”

“Beer [39] aims to focus the debate on the ‘social power of algorithms’.”

“…systems deployed by platform companies are also of interest to digital media researchers, who, through ‘critical algorithm studies’ scholarship (Gillespie and Seaver 2015), have examined the increasing role that automated decision-making plays in contemporary life (Beer 2017; Burrell 2016).”

“When professionals cannot analyze the reasoning behind AI decisions, they miss out on the learning process (Beer 2017), lacking opportunities to reflect on, deepen, or update their expertise (Beane 2019).”

“As work in critical algorithm studies has pointed out, transparency practices do not take place in a social vacuum but play particular roles in their specific cultural and organizational settings (Beer, 2017; Kemper and Kolkman, 2018).”

“While numerous conceptual studies have explored how algorithms shape everyday life (e.g., Beer, 2017; Diakopoulos, 2015; Willson, 2017), these typically take a technological perspective to uncover how algorithms exert power.”

“(Ananny and Crawford 2018; Beer 2017; Taddeo and Floridi 2018b; Möller et al.”

“Recent applications of algorithm-based HR decision-making differ from traditional electronic monitoring in at least three ways (Beer 2017; Weibel et al. 2016; Zarsky 2015).”

“…stemming from wide-spread application of PA that may adversely affect people’s virtue are on the rise; for example, using algorithmic decision-making tools in organizations that curtail workers’ capacity for voluntary action (Beer, 2017) and personal integrity (e.g., Leicht-Deobald et al, 2019).”

“As calculative objects, algorithms operate in subtle ways: they are ‘‘virtuals’’ that generate a whole variety of ‘‘actuals’’; they are compressed and hidden, and we do not encounter them in the way that we encounter traditional rules (Lash, 2007; Beer, 2009, 2017).”

“In the following analysis, therefore, algorithms are examined using a social science approach in which the “algorithm” is assumed to be a multi-layer concept that includes heterogeneous and dynamic sociotechnical practices (Beer, 2017).”

“This decision making is then actively reintegrated back into the social world (Beer 2017; Burrell 2016; Pink et al. 2017), supporting or making decisions about, for example, which roads get repaired, who is entitled to welfare benefits, and who is likely to return to prison (Eubanks 2018; O’Neil…”

“2013), how AI could miss nuance and surprise (Beer 2019) and how infrastructures developed for AI in research (such as in research management), could be used for surveillance and algorithmic management (Beer 2017; Williamson 2015).”

“PageRank is one of the algorithms that has gained the greatest ‘ fame ’ in scholarly discourse (Beer, 2017).”

“…largest corporate platforms, here we are concerned with platform real estate as part of the wider ‘information dragnet’ (Fourcade and Healy, 2017) by which data is harvested and analyzed for the purpose of capital accumulation and social ordering (Beer 2017; Fourcade and Healy 2013; Sadowski 2019).”

“Indeed, this is one of the risks that Beer (2017) is concerned about when we focus in on algorithms as singular objects or actors: ‘ The problem comes if we try to detach the algorithm from the social world in order to analyse its properties and powers – seeing it as a technical and self-contained…”

“Our third contribution addresses the literature on the relationship of algorithms to human practices, those practices’ reaction to the algorithms (Gillespie, 2014), and the algorithms’ relevance to social outcomes (Beer, 2017; Newell and Marabelli, 2015).”

“Beer, D. (2017) ‘The Social Power of Algorithms’, Information Communication and Society”

“…algorithmic systems, including machine learning systems, are therefore non-neutral (Winner 1980; Gillespie 2014; Hill 2016; Beer 2016; Just and Latzer 2017); they are inherently normative and contextual in nature (Beer 2017; Kitchin 2017), in addition to whatever functional capacity they possess.”

“These issues, including credibility and trust regarding how we assess and accept AIs, remain critical to algorithm design in media domain (Beer 2017; Dörr and Hollnbuchner 2017).”

“As Beer (2017) has argued, algorithms have a “social power” through the ability to reorder the social world, which is particularly prescient when applied to the decisions developers of large-scale AI make during AI production.”

“Nevertheless, some concerns have recently been raised with regard to FATE [1,7].”

“Moreover, it is important to investigate how discourses about algorithms shape the broader debates about social change and development, and especially the role innovations play in the processes of development of AI (Beer 2017).”

“…a large body of literature in science and technology studies, legal studies, computer science, sociology, geography and media studies, among others (Beer, 2017; Striphas, 2015; Ziewitz, Corresponding author: James Muldoon, Department of Politics, University of Exeter, Treliever Road, Penryn,…”

“The first of these considers the broad social, political and economic implications of algorithms, predominantly using a theoretical approach (for an overview, see Beer, 2017; Kitchin, 2017).”

“The problem of data access by policy-makers has been explored by Thaler and Tucker (2013) in their discussion of choice engines, in the hypernudge literature (Beer, 2017; Yeung, 2017) and in the literature regarding big data technologies such as arti fi cial intelligence (Hall & Pesenti, 2017).”

“Algorithms are objective insofar as they inherently are neither pernicious nor benevolent; rather, it is how they are constructed and deployed that conditions effects (Beer, 2017).”

“This situation is problematic in that power and capital increasingly transfer through data and yet people generally possess only a limited awareness of how data exercise influence over their lives in important, if often opaque and unseen, ways (Beer, 2017).”

“They establish legitimacy and authority for recognizing data patterns and making predictions and classi fi cations by promoting calculative objectivity and using the formal language of rationality (Beer, 2017; Carlson, 2018).”

“The use of words such as ‘manually’, ‘suspect’, ‘manipu-late’, ‘secret source’ and ‘take a peek under the hood’ clearly confirm that it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the human hand in the steering of algorithms (Beer, 2017).”

“Algorithms are deemed powerful social ‘institutions' because they are widely utilised in a range of social sorting, profiling, recommendation and decision ‐ making processes upon whose results salient social and legal actions are taken (Beer, 2017).”

“Another fruitful avenue would be to consider the type of AI and the information known about its algorithms, as algorithms di ff er in purpose, bias, ability, and complexity (Beer, 2017; Kitchin, 2017).”

“Unbiasedness is therefore a deceptive goal that, instead of solving social problems, reproduces problematic ideas, such as the unrealistic imaginary that technology can be neutral (Beer, 2017).”

“Such questions figure into a broader set of concerns about the “social power of algorithms” (Beer, 2017), or the increasing and complicated role that algorithmic processes play in structuring our social world, in connection with big data, automation, and the overall quantification of everyday life…”

“Key policy documents were analyzed: these included the digitalization strategy for the public sector, the Norwegian AI strategy, the concept selection study on sharing of data within the public sector, and mandate letters for the two organizations (2017–2019).”

“Although there is great power in the algorithms that drive social media platforms (Beer, 2017; Noble, 2018), this power is often subtle enough not to be noticed by students (or most users) who only pay attention to the results that algorithms produce.”

“At this point, it is crucial to apprehend the working operations of the algorithm, in order to obtain a full awareness of what it does and how it shapes a particular view on practice (Beer, 2017).”

“Numerous studies have demonstrated that algorithms cannot be studied adequately as stand-alone processes, but instead need to be viewed as embedded in wider ecosystems (Beer, 2017; Willson, 2017) comprising both technical and human components.”

“This Special Issue contributes specific cases and fine-grained conceptual distinctions to ongoing discussions and critiques of data-driven research models and big data analytics (cf. Beer, 2017; boyd & Crawford, 2012; Cheney-Lippold, 2017; Leurs, 2017; Zook et al., 2017).”

“Beer (2017) reflects on the role of such algorithms in shaping how people are treated and judged and how, as a result, they affect outcomes and opportunities for people, while Bucher (2017) explores ‘how algorithms make people feel’, elaborating on the details of people’s personal stories of…”

“In the current moment, it is artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data analytics that are emblematic—we live in the age of the algorithm (Beer 2017; Ziewitz 2016).”

“Beer (2017, 11) labels this attribute “calculative objectivity,” noting the symbolic character of algorithms as “shorthand for the power and potential of calculative systems that can think more quickly, more comprehensively and more accurately than humans.””

“The notion of the algorithm as an apparatus which is both powerful and inscrutable at the same time has come to structure current discussions on algorithms and their role in the contemporary healthcare sector (Beer 2017, Neyland 2016).”

“It is these algorithmic associations through which Neyland and M¨ollers see algorithms as having social power (2017: 46).”

“…for the platform, will be suppressed from viewership and caught in a downward spiral of diminishing visibility, thus emphasising the enduring consequences of the gatekeeping function (Granka 2010; Beer 2017) of algorithmic sorting and classification on the diversity and plurality of online content.”

“In the latter line of thinking, the contexts and discourses within which algorithms are constructed and deployed are decisive in their political orientation (Beer, 2017, p. 9).”

“To date, although the necessity to understand algorithms as part of social processes has been emphasized repeatedly (Beer 2017), this important aspect of how ADM systems are implemented in everyday bureaucratic decision-making has only been analyzed in a handful of recent studies.”

“, clearly informing stakeholders what data is being collected, with whom it is shared, and how it is being used [9, 47]; or taking a corrective perspective toward the reliability of algorithmic decisions [4, 5].”

“Diese strukturbildenden Effekte von Technik werden zum anderen ergänzt durch Ansatzpunkte einer technisch vermittelten Institutionalisierung sozialer Regeln und Regulierung sozialer Prozesse, die vor allem durch den Einsatz von Algorithmen umgesetzt und in der Literatur als „algorithmic governance“, „algorithmic regul…”

“As Beer (2017) puts it, ‘there is a sense of a need to explore how algorithms make choices or how they provide information that informs and shapes choice’ (p. 5).”

“…adaptation produce di ff erent sorts of users as much as they are themselves the product of user feedback, baseline visions about the social world and education held by development teams and their presuppositions of what learning is and entails (Souto-Otero and Beneito-Montagut 2016; Beer 2017).”

“Through datafication practices, algorithms are starting to perform new worlds,2 by creating and enacting ‘new behaviours, new expressions, new actors and new realities’ (Muller, 2015: 29) and exerting power over us (Beer, 2017) through these effects (Diakopoulos, 2013).”