Regulation by Design

= ‘design-based’ regulation, algorithmic decision-guidance techniques

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* Article: ‘Hypernudge’: Big Data as a mode of regulation by design. By Karen Yeung. Information, Communication & Society Volume 20, 2017 - Issue 1, Pages 118-136 : The Social Power of Algorithms doi

URL = https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2016.1186713

"This paper draws on regulatory governance scholarship to argue that the analytic phenomenon currently known as ‘Big Data’ can be understood as a mode of ‘design-based’ regulation. Although Big Data decision-making technologies can take the form of automated decision-making systems, this paper focuses on algorithmic decision-guidance techniques. By highlighting correlations between data items that would not otherwise be observable, these techniques are being used to shape the informational choice context in which individual decision-making occurs, with the aim of channelling attention and decision-making in directions preferred by the ‘choice architect’. By relying upon the use of ‘nudge’ – a particular form of choice architecture that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives, these techniques constitute a ‘soft’ form of design-based control. But, unlike the static Nudges popularised by Thaler and Sunstein [(2008). Nudge. London: Penguin Books] such as placing the salad in front of the lasagne to encourage healthy eating, Big Data analytic nudges are extremely powerful and potent due to their networked, continuously updated, dynamic and pervasive nature (hence ‘hypernudge’)."