Project: Reimagining public values in algorithmic futures

Acronym	REIMAGINE ADM (Reference Number: CHANSE-726)
Duration	01/09/2022 - 01/09/2025
Project Topic	Recent scholarly work argues that digital developments around automated decision-making (ADM) and algorithmic systems have led to negative social impacts that are undermining democratic processes and strengthening inequalities. While this work explores harms and problems arising from ADM systems, our project offers a complementary and corrective perspective with a focus on the role of public values within these systems. The novelty of our project lies in mobilizing anthropological and sociological perspectives to examine how values are deployed in situated practices rather than in the abstract. Our ambition is to develop new methods and comprehensive frameworks for exploring values in socio-technical systems. Rather than starting from scratch, we will reinvigorate existing empirical cases, ranging from ADM in insurance, healthcare, public infrastructure and activism by focusing on their relationship to public values. The project offers an empirically grounded perspective: observing the people behind algorithms, what they do when they build, promote and evaluate these systems. We focus on moments of alignment and tensions, which then reveal ways in which individuals and societies prioritise and negotiate between competing values. The research process is arranged into three collaboratories – cases, methods and alternatives. With the term collaboratory, a neologism combining laboratory and collaboration, we emphasize the experimental and participatory nature of our work, which includes ongoing dialogue with stakeholders. The collaboratories cut across three research themes which will unite the cases: 1. bridging and comparing public values in empirical cases 2. challenging and operationalizing values in action, and 3. rethinking and reimagining algorithmic futures. By consolidating empirically informed and imaginative ways of addressing values, our project promotes societally sensitive understandings of algorithmic systems and futures.
Network	CHANSE
Call	Transformations: Social and Cultural Dynamics in the Digital Age

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	University of Helsinki	Coordinator	Finland
2	University of Southern Denmark	Partner	Denmark
3	University of Ljubljana	Partner	Slovenia
4	KU Leuven	Partner	Belgium
5	Linköping University	Partner	Sweden
6	Zavod Radio Student	Observer	Slovenia
7	Lucidminds AI	Observer	Netherlands
8	Spotify	Observer	Finland
9	Liva Health	Observer	Denmark
10	Digital and population data services agency	Observer	Finland
11	STUNS Energy	Observer	Sweden
12	Danes je nov dan (DJND)	Observer	Slovenia
13	Algorithm Watch	Observer	Germany
14	Un/Know	Observer	Finland
15	Research and Innovation Unit of Radiology, Odense University Hospital	Observer	Denmark
16	My Society	Observer	United Kingdom
17	My Data Global	Observer	Finland