Article ID: CBB982958423

Who Gets to Choose? On the Socio-algorithmic Construction of Choice (March 2021)

unapi

This article deals with choice-inducing algorithms––algorithms that are explicitly designed to affect people’s choices. Based on an ethnographic account of three Israeli data analytics companies, I explore how algorithms are being designed to drive people into choice-making and examine their co-constitution by an assemblage of specifically positioned human and nonhuman agents. I show that the functioning, logic, and even ethics of choice-inducing algorithms are deeply influenced by the epistemologies, meaning systems, and practices of the individuals who devise and use them and that such algorithms are similarly affected by interorganizational relationships, various nonhuman agents, and changing geopolitical contexts. I conclude by discussing the flexibility of choice-inducing algorithms and by arguing that such algorithms are not programmed to induce specific choices but to more generally convert people into choosers, and thus, to algorithmically (re)create the modern need to choose. This article contributes to the growing literature on algorithms and culture and to our understanding of choice-making in contemporary life. At the same time, it provides a new vocabulary that offers to critically engage with algorithms and their power without losing sight of the often very specific contexts from which they arise.

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Authors & Contributors
Coeckelbergh, Mark
Neil Urquhart
The Anh Han
Massimo Ciccozzi
Alexandra Luccioni
Louise Amoore
Concepts
Technology and society
Computers and computing
Algorithms
Artificial intelligence
Technoscience; science and technology studies
Automation
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
Places
United States
Russia
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