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Big Data, algorithms, artificial intelligence... Multiple and overlapping concepts coexist to make sense of digital technologies of quantification and their impact on the social world. This article offers a theoretical framework to clarify the social and organizational effects of data, online and offline. Specifically, I provide a typology of five different mechanisms through which data- driven procedures operate: comparison, dragnet, triage, extraction, and prominence. After drawing on analog and digital examples to illustrate these processes, I put this framework to use by turning to three empirical cases that involve data-driven software programs: Chartbeat in web journalism, COMPAS in criminal justice, and Predictim in babysitter hiring. I analyze these cases through the typology offered above. The article concludes by calling for more robust theoretical integration in the uses of data both as a method and as an object of study.