A tool, connector, or data processor: On the multiplicity of an algorithm and its worlds

This paper explores the development of an algorithm for child welfare administration in Denmark. Based on an ethnographic study of the development process, we argue that scientists and IT developers enacted not one but multiple versions of “the” algorithm, and in this process, also engineered its multiple potential worlds. We conceptualize these as “algorithm-worlds”; specific sets of relations in which a version of the algorithm can exist and act. We illustrate three examples from our study: the algorithm as a docile tool within the world of child welfare casework; the algorithm as a data-connector within the world of public data infrastructure; and the algorithm as a data processor in the world of a legal assessment. We contend the merely foregrounding algorithms’ multiplicity risks underestimating their world-making power, whereas construing algorithms as powerful without attending to their processes of becoming renders them seemingly singular and universal. By combining recent work on the multiplicity of algorithms in STS with actor-network-theory studies on “heterogeneous engineering,” our approach, in turn, allows elucidating not only three different versions but also how each of these came with a distinct world of practice. We argue that these algorithm-worlds partially coexist, partially conflict or cascade.