You have full access to this open access chapter. This chapter examines how the doings of the algorithm instantiated through its operations, actions, and steps and its accompanying algorithmic system are revealed and explored through an engagement with the paradata created as a part of this data-making effort. In doing so, the chapter explores how the concept of paradata helps us understand how information professionals and domain stakeholders conceptualize accountable algorithmic entities and how this influences how they emerge as documented and describable entities.
Two complementary frameworks for capturing and preserving paradata for accountability purposes are examined in the process. The first is associated with diplomatic theory and archival notions of context and focuses on the role of paradata for algorithmic transparency. The second is related to knowledge management and to efforts in the AI community to use paradata to create unified reporting models that enhance the explainability of algorithms and algorithmic systems.
The chapter concludes by demarcating examples and different use cases for paradata for accountability purposes and the mechanisms by which these agents of transparency and explainability can connect with interested and vested audiences. You have full access to this open access chapter, Download chapter PDF. With a surge of new technologies leading to a growth in volume, type, and complexity of data-making efforts and their associated data outputs, steps are underway to discern the concurrent processes of data genesis, maintenance, and use.
This chapter examines the algorithm and the system surrounding it as a form of information object in a way that adds to the critical inquiry into the data-making efforts inherent in their construction and use.
Drawing on scholarship from information science and the broader research community adopting a critical stance on the study of algorithms and algorithmic culture, the chapter examines how the doings of the algorithm instantiated through its operations, actions, and steps and its accompanying algorithmic system are revealed and explored through an engagement with the auxiliary dataβor paradataβcreated as a part of this data-making effort. As a complex digital object comprising more than just content, software also exists as a ubiquitous form and output of data-making, of which algorithms the artifact of interest in this chapter are among the most studied kinds.
