Week 8 and 9: Identity online and data stored about us

This workshop looked at strategies for interrogating built-in algorithms in relation to identity.

There was a focus on the input (the data I share and what can be collected about me), output (my personal ad profile which reflects how a platform understands me) and the process (ways to try and un-black box the algorithms used to categorise).

We firstly looked at the data that platforms hold about us because of the input created, and I looked at X (fka Twitter). The 'interests' it held about me were pretty accurate, as I use Twitter mostly to consume content regarding football. That said, I was still surprised at how specific its ad system recognised my 'interests', down to naming individuals. With that in mind there were some anomolies and topics I was unfamiliar with / only very passively scrolled past however I did notice that it is possible to 'dictate' (or, perhaps tailor and make more accurate for the algorithm and ads!) what my interests are by unticking boxes of topics I'm not into.

To consider output, we looked at our Google ad profile. This was an exercise done during my undergraduate degree but I was interested to see how things had changed in the two years since I last looked. I found it interesting that the ads served to me were based off topics such as 'real estate' and 'online grocery shopping'. Neither of these things were topics I actively search for / engage with online so wonder if these ads were pushed to me because of the 'demographic' profile that Google associates with me. Others, however, were more accurate and aligned with my online browsing habits eg ads for clothes shops and music / audio topics.

We then went through the process, using Sumptner's matrix method of manual scraping of our friends' recent posts on social media. This was long and interesting as the subjective nature of cateogorising a post in itself is contentious. Added to the fact that some categories were complex - for example, sport and music were in the same category - it was then interesting to iterate the method and intervene to alter categories. Reflecting on this with my international peers was interesting, as we brought a different range of perspectives and experiences.