1,720,987 research outputs found
Theaters of Algorithmic Transparency and the Politics of Exemplarity
No full textInternational audienceThis article shows how transparency practitioners seeking to enhance the understandability of French housing tax algorithms produced slow disclosures they claim to be “exemplary.” In doing so, the study highlights time management as an understudied dimension of transparency performances. What matters is not simply how each disclosure appears convincing but their relationships: they constitute a sequence resulting in the pacification of critical audiences. In this configuration, algorithmic transparency generates what I call a “theater:” ways to stage disclosures, sustain them with claims of “exemplary” performance, and display over time different accounts where the understanding of algorithms will always be partial. The justice that is supposed to come with full accountability will then be postponed. Because it takes a lot of time and effort, demonstrating accountability has been delegated two times: from ministries to less known state intermediaries with expertise in algorithms management; and then from intermediaries to citizens obliged to interpret complex disclosures staged through web simulators. While in early STS studies about the theatrics of accountability audiences were simply witnesses of performances, in theaters of algorithmic transparency, citizens are over time more profoundly configured as active users of code and data
Les demandes citoyennes de transparence au sujet des algorithmes publics.: Une note de recherche pour la mission Etalab.
No full textCette note de recherche explore trois problématiques :1)Comment les citoyens français utilisent le nouveau droit à l'information individuelle permettantd'obtenir des renseignements sur le fonctionnement des algorithmes utilisés par la puissancepublique afin de prendre des décisions administratives (ex : calcul du montant d’une taxe,allocation d'un étudiant dans un établissement) ? Dans cette note, l’usage de ce droit seraévalué, mis en débat et comparé avec ce qui se déroule de manière analogue dans un paysvoisin comme le Royaume-Uni.2) Comment accompagner les citoyens dans la meilleure compréhension des algorithmes publicset dans l’exercice de leurs droits ? La note de recherche formule des pistes de bonnes pratiquespour l’écriture de demandes par les citoyens auprès des administrations. 3) À quelles difficultés sont confrontées les administrations dans la production de réponses auxdemandes des citoyens qui concernent les algorithmes ? Il sera présenté un cadre d’analysepour penser les différentes contraintes qui pèsent sur la fabrique des réponses apportées auxcitoyens
Les demandes citoyennes de transparence au sujet des algorithmes publics.: Une note de recherche pour la mission Etalab.
No full textCette note de recherche explore trois problématiques :1)Comment les citoyens français utilisent le nouveau droit à l'information individuelle permettantd'obtenir des renseignements sur le fonctionnement des algorithmes utilisés par la puissancepublique afin de prendre des décisions administratives (ex : calcul du montant d’une taxe,allocation d'un étudiant dans un établissement) ? Dans cette note, l’usage de ce droit seraévalué, mis en débat et comparé avec ce qui se déroule de manière analogue dans un paysvoisin comme le Royaume-Uni.2) Comment accompagner les citoyens dans la meilleure compréhension des algorithmes publicset dans l’exercice de leurs droits ? La note de recherche formule des pistes de bonnes pratiquespour l’écriture de demandes par les citoyens auprès des administrations. 3) À quelles difficultés sont confrontées les administrations dans la production de réponses auxdemandes des citoyens qui concernent les algorithmes ? Il sera présenté un cadre d’analysepour penser les différentes contraintes qui pèsent sur la fabrique des réponses apportées auxcitoyens
Theatres of algorithmic transparency : a post-digital ethnography
Full text linkThis thesis investigates how algorithmic transparency is performed in French public sector organisations. I analyse the practices, methods and performative style of public disclosures in an ethnography initiated at Etalab — the French Open Data task force — and conducted in 2018. The study starts by considering recent controversies about unfair administrative algorithms. This research shows that to be effective, calling for algorithmic transparency requires the staging of identities, issues and algorithms. I describe how information about algorithms is disclosed through the mise en scène of citizens’ motivations, the placing of controversial requests on public bodies, and a regulatory framework redefining administrative procedures as “algorithms”. In a second empirical chapter, I unpack the dispute about unfair calculations of the housing tax. This dispute provides an opportunity to understand how the performance of transparency is purposefully planned by Etalab and the General Directorate of Public Finance. When these two organisations realise that full accountability of the housing tax algorithm is impossible, they set the boundaries of what should be made public. I posit that to be performed, algorithmic transparency requires the negotiation of its limits and the scripting of disclosures. I then study how the housing tax algorithm was disclosed in practice. Since full accountability is not attainable, algorithmic transparency is not longer defined as a bureaucratic duty but performed through a proclaimed exemplarity. Disclosures provide occasions for actors to brand transparency as an honourable achievement, but one that is disconnected from accountability requirements. On this basis, I develop the argument that algorithmic transparency is best understood, not as an accountability device, but as a political force shaping new narratives about public sector digitalisation. The performance of algorithmic transparency serves as an incentive to reorder public services, and, an attempt to refresh the technologies supporting administrative action in the public sector
Algorithms as figures: Towards a post-digital ethnography of algorithmic contexts
No full textInternational audienceThis article intervenes in contemporary discussions of critical algorithm studies about the meaning of the notion ''algorithm". While many critical scholars as well as most public and private organisations understand this concept as a computational procedure instantiated by a programming code in a software stack, I argue that the algorithm is better understood as a "figure": a discursive short-hand pointing to diverse modes of procedural governance and not always digital ones. Since algorithmic figures are generated by a bundle of heterogeneous contexts, their emergence leads to conflicting visions about the reality, materiality and effects of algorithmisation. This article provides four ethnographic strategies to describe the contexts of production and circulation of algorithmic figures: observing the observers of algorithms; mapping and creating algorithmic figures; drawing relations across contexts of figuring; and analysing the transformative effects of algorithmic figures on the attempts to govern them
Surfacing Algorithms: An Inventive Method for Accountability
No full textInternational audienceFor many scholars and policy makers, the democratic demand for algorithmic transparency is a call for openness. Yet critical algorithm studies have shown that classical accountability devices, such as freedom of information, audits, or code openness have failed to make algorithms meaningfully knowable to ordinary citizens. Rather than waiting for curated and limited transparency to open so-called "hidden black boxes," I propose and illustrate in this article a method of "surfacing algorithms." This experimental method makes algorithms accountable through the (re)design of their surfaces: the forms of appearance, documentation, and tangible devices accompanying their use in everyday life. Democratic accountability is thus reconceptualized as a design problem. I demonstrate my method by showing how the reverse-engineering of the French housing tax algorithm performed by citizens during collective workshops through the scrutiny of their tax letters served to interrogate a fiscal algorithm from its surface
Interface Détournement
No full textInterface DétournementWARNING: : We are under the black magic of capitalist digital interface making! Critical radars will detect some conceptual gibberish over here! WHAT: : Satirical détournement of your favorite bullshit website interface, through parody and poetry. Heal your eyes and brain by scratching and diffracting the surface of eveyday browsing.URGENCY: : If you have the feeling that some words are imposed to you and want to reclaim a power of saying/naming.</div
Algorithmic Transparency: On the Rise of a New Normative Ideal and its Silenced Performative Implications
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