Assemble with care: Programming and facilitating meaningful human agency within data and algorithmic systems

Our everyday lives are increasingly entangled with ubiquitous but invisible data and algorithmic
systems. These systems are becoming a matter of fact of our everyday. Almost no aspect of our
lives exist that has not been curated, mediated, ordered, and structured based on algorithmic
systems: the news and media we consume, our potential dates, the music we listen do, the ads we
see, the prices for goods and services we are offered. While this might seem innocent, the evidence
is mounting daily about the potential risks and harms this algorithmic ordering of the social brings
with itself. This thesis takes these algorithmic matters of fact as matters of concern. Using the
notion of algorithmic governmentality to describe the state of as if agency that individuals have within
the human-algorithms assemblages, this thesis aims to find the counterpoints and the counter-
conducts against this governmentality to enable meaningful human agency as a precondition for digital
sovereignty. To do this a number of empirical studies have been conducted. The aim of these studies
is to both inquire about the requirements for agency of the individuals themselves entangled in
these systems, and to investigate how they can be technically translated into technology design. As
a result of these inquiries, I propose the notion of agency affordances understood as tools and
mechanisms for assembling meaningful human agency by programming it via the technical
infrastructures and for facilitating it via the societal structures. Borrowing from the theories of the
semiotician A.J. Greimas and transposing them into the realm of the algorithmic, this thesis further
develops an analytical, conceptual, and practical framework for investigating and enabling
meaningful human agency. Another crucial contribution of this thesis is that is also serves as a
study in research methods regarding investigating data and algorithmic systems. Adopting the
approach of thinking and researching with care and trying to navigate the technical affordances of
algorithmic systems that constrain our field of research, a number of approaches are developed
that propose productive mechanisms of opening for research. By incorporating the approaches of
critical companionship, critical pedagogy and studying up, this thesis also maps productive and empowering
and avenues for participatory research.