Scores That Travel

January 2025 –

Every individual today exists as the subject of a complex ecology of everyday scoring including credit scores, performance metrics, Uber ratings, immigration points, consumer scores, insurance risk assessments, and social media prioritization. People live in with more or less visible metrics that have far-ranging consequences for their lives. The Digital Due Process Clinic took a holistic approach to these scores, taking an ecological view that captures, at least a snapshot, of this overwhelming phenomenon.

But to what extent do different scoring systems shape and influence each other? How does such an ecosystem of scoring evolve? How do technical strategies, business approaches, user interfaces, design ideals, underlying databases, and just eerie similarities move among different scoring systems? Just as importantly, how do they feed into each other? And what are the modes of discovering or (folk) theorizing about these commonalities and interconnections?

In the Spring of 2025, with the support of the National Science Foundation, the Digital Due Process is launching a second phase of the project to probe these questions on the evolution of the scoring ecology. Researchers will explore different hypotheses for how scores interrelate and evolve by looking at the homeomorphisms or shared forms among scores, the political economy in which score-making is sold, and integrating folk theories about scores alongside more established sources. The resulting scholarship and report are designed to complement to the growing field of algorithmic auditing and related efforts to evaluate the harms and benefits of specific systems.

Funding: NSF CAREER Award (#1848286)

Researchers