Visibility and Agency: Algorithmic Domestication Across a Service Ecosystem

This is a lunch seminar; please register your attendance by accepting/declining your emailed invitation by Friday, May 10th, at 10 AM at the latest (for catering). For more information please click here.

Abstract
Our longitudinal empirical study (between 1995-2023) examines the use of the Disease Activity Score (DAS) algorithm in a Swedish chronic care speciality hospital, and how it becomes entangled within the health system. From our analysis, we provide a conceptualization as to how the algorithm was domesticated by the multiple actors, through which different dimensions of reality were made visible and invisible, which, in turn, led to the reconfiguring of power relationships among actors distributed across the ecosystem. We contribute to the literature on algorithms and work by foregrounding how the domestication of algorithms creates new in/visibilities. Through these insights, we aim to inform future studies of how the in/visibilities produced by algorithms in local settings may, over time, enable wakes of innovation across actors reconfiguring power relations across actors in the wider ecosystem.