ISSR Scholars Mentor Seminar | "Credit Score De-Simulator™️: Experiments with Analytic Parody in Data-Driven Worlds" with Malte Ziewitz (Cornell University)

What are the possibilities and limitations of analytic parody in data-driven worlds? This talk explores this question through a design and thought experiment. Building on a close reading of credit score simulators, those interactive tools that are designed to help consumers understand how changes in financial practices may lead to changes in their credit scores, we developed an alternative device, the Credit Score De-Simulator™️. Unlike the original, our tool allows the user to manipulate a range of social factors not usually accounted for, including family wealth, ZIP code, racial classification, number of children, and risk of cardiovascular disease—factors that may not directly figure in the calculation of the score but that have nevertheless been shown to influence results. Prototyping the Credit Score De-Simulator™️ helped us think through the mechanics of financial agency promoted by the scoring companies while also challenging us to reflect on the limitations of this approach. Analytic parody, we find, allows us to consider how and why one form of explanation may appear more reasonable than another and challenges our understanding of a world in which scholarly and corporate forms of explanation compete in consequential ways.

Malte Ziewitz is Associate Professor at the Department of Science & Technology Studies, where he also directs the Digital Due Process Clinic. An ethnographer and STS scholar, he studies what happens when people use technologies to solve social problems—and what this means for the rest of us. His recent work looked at the lived experiences of credit scoring subjects, the search engine optimization (SEO) industry, and attempts at algorithmic regulation.