Reflective piece

My scores were much the same on the digital literary test except for ‘Participating in online communities’ and ‘Managing online privacy and security’. I believe the reason for this is because the unit has grown my knowledge and understanding of these areas. Especially the breadth of online communities and the severity of online security which we saw in the Cambridge Analytica case study in week 4.

My main takeaway from this module will be based around following the changing space of regulation in digital marketing and the internet in general. The fact that Cambridge Analytica were not punished for what they did - just how they did it proves the comment that Bright made on my first blog post, the sluggishness of regulation change/implementation has made it obsolete.  The data-heavy era we currently reside in has and continues to progress faster than regulation can be written to control it, meaning that scandals such as Cambridge Analytica are destined to continue until the free use of the internet is put under heavy regulation alike to the financial markets.

I discussed with Anja whether a breach like Cambridge Analytica that was “ethically positive” would still be considered as invasive as the actual scenario, she believes that it was the ‘how’ and not the ‘why’ that was important however I am not so sure. When Lisanne and I discussed Pepper, an AI robot designed to learn from you and adapt to what you wanted Pepper to act like, I felt that although the data Pepper used to adapt was not digital data, it was still personal data. However, because Pepper appears harmless and seems to be frivolous fun, we do not mind Pepper learning and adapting to our likes and dislikes.

One area that we agreed was that GDPR appeared to be too little too late (as shown in my conversation with Julia), and against what Jack had argued, I felt that the ASA had not thought their guidelines through for bloggers either. We can see from the ‘super apps’ video shared this week that the world is moving toward, not away from being entirely digital, people will become reliant on the internet to integrate with day to day life and complete tasks previously not done digitally, and yet these apps that we rely on and trust are not trustworthy, or protections are not in place from their third-party providers.

What I argued in week 4 was that a code of conduct needs to be implemented by major data-handling corporations that made the treatment of data ethically conscious.  As Anja pointed out in her comment on my initial blog post, ethics are not clear cut and so legality cannot be relied upon to be the benchmark for how user data is treated.

Upon reflection of the unit as a whole, commenting and replying to my colleagues has allowed me to grow my understanding of the topics discussed. In topics I didn’t think were particularly related – i.e. big data and AI, I have learned to draw comparisons because of the structure and clear arguments put forward by my peers.

References:

The Concordia Summit. (2016, September 27). Cambridge Analytica - The Power of Big Data and Psychographics. Retrieved August 4, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Dd5aVXLCc

The New York Times. (2016, August 09). How China Is Changing Your Internet | The New York Times. Retrieved August 4, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAesMQ6VtK8