Algorithms as Institutions

This chapter advances the book’s premise: algorithms are a contemporary type of institution. First, the chapter defines algorithms and discusses how algorithmic systems are changing societies. It then explores how algorithms resemble other institutions—for example, algorithm-based technologies operate as vectors that create norms and rules for influencing individual behaviour with collective outcomes. Algorithmic systems shape human behaviour by assigning meanings, obligations, permissions, or resources to human actions in opaque ways. Algorithms also create orders—and stabilizing processes—grounded on power relations; and yet algorithms do not exist or govern independently from human action. With humans still playing a major role in making political and moral choices, Algorithmic Institutionalism offers a way to make sense of these processes. This chapter also considers how Algorithmic Institutionalism provides a complex approach capable of overcoming four attractive dichotomies: animism versus instrumentalism; structure versus agency; collective versus individual; and determinism versus novelty.