Decolonizing Algorithmic systems: A critical design to problematize algorithms and digital data from the south

Abstract

This article offers methodological and theoretical reflections based on the interdisciplinary project "Algorithmic Identities." Initiated in 2019 between researchers from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and the University of Warwick (UK), this project seeks to understand how personhood is configured in times of algorithms and digital data. We designed a prototype app, "Big Sister, " which emulates algorithmic profiling and recommendation systems of major digital platforms. This prototype has served as a twofold social research device. Firstly, it allowed us to produce knowledge from a critical and decolonial doing and undoing; secondly, through digital trace interviews with prototype users, we explored their experiences and stimulate reflection on the mediations of algorithms in their lives. This article examines the prototyping process of this app and some findings of how people in Chile understand, inhabit, and shape data and algorithms daily. Drawing on insights from Latin American authors such as Arturo Escobar, Jesús Martín-Barbero, and Paulo Freire, we argue how the prototyping of an app can move towards a "problematizing" approach to datafication and algorithmic systems in Latin America.