This online assignment is worth two points. For it, you will
explore and analyze your digital media presence on two major digital media
platforms: Google and Facebook.
To begin, you need to collect the information Google and
Facebook have about you. Let’s start with Facebook.
Partly in response to calls for greater transparency and
increased user control of privacy settings, Facebook now enables users to
download the data that Facebook has about them. So download your data and take
a look at it!
Here’s how: Go to Facebook and be logged in. In the top-left
corner, next to your picture, is an image of a little lock. Click on that, then
click ‘see more settings.’ Then, at the top left, click ‘General.’ At the
bottom of that page, click ‘Download a copy.’
You will need to enter your password, then it will tell you
to wait a little while for your data to be generated. Probably it will tell you
that it will send a notification to your email account. This takes between a
minute and several hours, even a day. So do this ahead of time! And be patient.
Once the email comes, it will have a link to the data.
Download the data (it will be in a zip file, so unzip it), and check it out.
Explore what is in there.
Now for Google. This is somewhat simpler. With Google, we
will focus on not all the information that Google has about you, but instead
what inferences the company makes about you based on what it knows. To figure
that out, go to:
This page shows you, in essence, who you are to Google. It
shows two columns, corresponding to the inference they have made based on your
search history and website visits. It also shows a number of variables about
you (of which the most interesting may be ‘Interests’; click on ‘Edit’ there to
see the full list of things Google thinks you are interested in—and do it in
both columns).
Finally, for the online assignment. Create a post on your
section’s blog. Describe your exploration a little bit. What did you see? What
surprised you? Did anything about the exploration trouble you? Does Google know
you accurately? What do they have wrong/right? Why? Then take us to some larger
conclusions: What does your experience in this exercise suggest about life in
the digital society? How does it shift your thought about how you communicate
and interact online?
Your post should be 500 words, written in complete
sentences. It is more of a reflection than a thesis-based essay, so you are not
expected to have an introduction, body and conclusion; but nonetheless, it
should have good structure, and where you draw on others’ ideas, you should
cite them using citations or hyperlinks.
(If you don’t have both a Facebook or Google account, write
your post based on the account information you do have.)
