This week in LIS 201 (week 08)

Week 08: Big data and social surveillance

LECTURE ON TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21

• Beyond Google

READINGS TO COMPLETE BEFORE DISCUSSION

• Tarleton Gillespie, “The relevance of algorithms,” in T. Gillespie et al. eds., Media Technologies (2014).
• David Lyon, “Surveillance, power, and everyday life,” in R. Mansell et al. eds., The Oxford Handbook of Information and Communication Technologies (2007).

HOMEWORK TO COMPLETE BEFORE DISCUSSION

• If it's your turn to write a 500-word article critique, you must post this to your section blog before your section meets.
• If it's your week to give a speech, prepare and practice!  Otherwise, prepare for a possible extemporaneous speech response.
• Post your rough draft of paper #2 to your personal wiki pages (you will want to create a separate page so that your peer reviewers can just "comment" at the bottom).

DISCUSSION MEETING

• First five minutes: QUIZ on reading terms
• Two student presentations (#11 and #12) on the readings (and two student extemporaneous responses).
• Discuss this week's lecture and required readings.

ONLINE OVER THE WEEKEND

This week, you will discover how much information you can find out about yourself online.

• First, do a geodemographic marketing analysis on yourself, by searching online for data about the place where you live which someone might ascribe to you. Here are some sites to start with: 
• http://www.whitepages.com/reverse_phone (enter your phone)
• http://factfinder.census.gov/ (enter your zip code)
• http://accessdane.co.dane.wi.us/ (enter your address)
• http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/ (find your hometown and explore income, education, other demographics)
• Next, do a social networking analysis on yourself, by searching for online data specifically about you on various social networking services that you might use  -- Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. Make sure you are not logged in to those services in order to see what an outside visitor would see (you might want to try searching your Facebook identity from a public computer, for example).
• Now do a general Google search, first using your name in different combinations ("Greg Downey," "Downey, Greg," "G Downey," etc.), then using your email address, and finally using your telephone number.
• Can you think of any other sites to search for which might provide either individual or aggregate data to help flesh out your "digital puppet"?
• When you are finished searching these sites, create a new post on your discusion section blog describing the person that a geodemographic firm would see when they look for "you". What do you think about this representation of your existence?
• Comment on at least one other student's posting for this assignment.
• You must finish this online activity before next week's lecture.