Week VII: Making the Invisible Visible

Data makes the world go ‘round. In the “information environment” (Gillespie, 2014), individuals leave behind traces of themselves through the web searches they make and which online content they engage with. This is then collected by organisations for their own purposes and it still remains unclear whether everything was obtained legally and with the full knowledge of the individual. What does this mean for publishers, both traditional and digital? What does this mean for the Average Joe?

It is evident that companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon and Apple dominate their respective fields, whether it is social networking, entertainment, selling products or archiving information. This power stems from capitalising on the potential of the internet early on and using algorithms and data mining to allow for immeasurable consumer and product data at their disposal (Smith, 2014; Gillespie, 2014). These companies aggressively push out their competitors while simultaneously marketing themselves as the best place to get the latest product/information, thus causing publishers and advertisers to clamour for space. The phrase “I don’t know, Google it”, Twitter hashtags, iPhones and iPads are all widely accepted as the norm. Therefore, these entities are no longer just companies; they have integrated themselves into the collective social consciousness.

This presents opportunities and problems. Lepore (2013) states that we have become “obsessed, at once, with being seen and being hidden, a world in which the only thing more cherished than privacy is publicity” which I believe accurately reflects contemporary society. The algorithms used to gather data can access more personal information than ever before. This can be seen positively since individuals will be able to find information and products that are relevant and interesting based on previous activity. Conversely, access to personal information raises questions about privacy on the internet. It is possible for Google to track your searches for advertisers, for Facebook to archive your chat logs and for Amazon to suggest twenty other books from one purchase (whether you enjoyed it or not). Having secure passwords doesn’t fully ensure that the program won’t use personal information unbeknownst to customers or that private content will remain private on the internet, a public domain.

A TED talk by Eli Pariser on the algorithms used by Google and Facebook (shown below) presents some interesting research on consequent outcomes from the data collected, highlights some flaws in the algorithms and facilitates discussion on how this information on users should be handled:

References:

Gillespie, T. 2014, ‘Facebook’s algorithm – why our assumptions are wrong, and our concerns are right’, Culture Digitally, 4 July, accessed 5 September 2014, <http://culturedigitally.org/2014/07/facebooks-algorithm-why-our-assumptions-are-wrong-and-our-concerns-are-right/>.

Lepore, J. 2013, ‘The prism: Privacy in an age of publicity’, The New Yorker, 24 June, accessed 5 September 2014, <http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/06/24/the-prism?currentPage=all>.

Smith, M. 2014, ‘How much does Google really know about you?’, Make Use Of, 17 June, accessed 6 September, <http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-much-google-know-about-you/>.

What FACEBOOK and GOOGLE are hiding from the world, 2011, online video, Thoughts Awakening, 14 September, accessed 8 September 2014, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOE1HFEL8XA>.