Florence Millerand
Guillaume Latzko-Toth
Computer algorithms are omnipresent, both in everyday life and in the workplace. The recent development of artificial intelligence-based tools, such as the ChatGPT conversational robot, has further contributed to their integration into a multitude of tasks and activities, particularly in professional environments focused on the production and circulation of information and knowledge, such as academia. However, algorithms remain shrouded in a certain “fuzziness,” partly because their functioning is unclear to the vast majority of people, and partly because they are, for the most part, invisible, abstract, and opaque. As they influence increasingly crucial decisions and shape our world in unprecedented ways, it is important to better understand the central role that algorithms play in society and to question how their ubiquity and growing mediation of social life can affect the ways we live and work, form relationships, and do business.
This project therefore aims to understand the place algorithms occupy in our contemporary societies by examining the imaginaries and practices developed around two of the most widely used types of tools in the academic context: generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity, and Gemini, based on algorithms called “large language models”; and scientific social networking sites such as Academia, ResearchGate, and Mendeley, based on content recommendation and visibility algorithms. Each of these tools relies on distinct families of algorithms and raises specific issues with regard to the purposes and contexts in which they were developed and are used.
We propose to study the “algorithmic imaginaries” that develop around these tools in order to better understand how these imaginaries influence a) the way algorithms are produced (by those responsible for their design and development) and b) the way they are integrated into everyday life, helping to transform practices themselves (by those who use them in their work, in this case academics). The aim is to examine, on the one hand, the imaginaries of the engineers who design the algorithms and, on the other hand, the imaginaries of the professors and students who use them, in order to understand more broadly their influence on the transformation of intellectual work and the circulation of scholarly publications.
More specifically, this project has the following three objectives:
1) Describe and analyze the imaginaries of the designers/developers of the algorithms on which tools based on generative AI techniques and scientific social networking sites are based, in order to understand how they conceive of their possible uses. In doing so, the project aims to fill a significant gap in social studies on algorithms, which tend to focus on the study of users' imaginations at the expense of those of designers. Although it is attracting growing interest, the influence of imaginations on the development of technological innovations remains understudied.
2) Describe and analyze users' algorithmic imaginaries to understand how these imaginaries affect their use of tools and the social practices in which these uses take place. In doing so, the project will provide new insights into the “ordinary” relationship with algorithms, the contexts in which users become aware of their existence, and the meaning they give them.
3) Understand how design imaginaries relate to usage imaginaries, given the constant interactions between algorithms and their users. The project is led by Florence Millerand (SSHRC Insight Grant 2025-2028). Guillaume Latzko-Toth and Claudine Bonneau are participating as co-researchers.
As part of the project, a postdoctoral fellowship is currently available. Find out more.
This content has been updated on 19 November 2025 at 17 h 18 min.