Policy Matters Now and in the Future: Net Neutrality, Corporate Data Mining, and Government Surveillance

Mining social media data: How are research sponsors and researchers addressing the ethical challenges?

“…Uncertainties about what is appropriate, acceptable, legal and responsible in these new virtual spaces, and for different forms of digital personal information, has also fuelled broader debates. These include debates around the need for ‘net neutrality’ or equal access to online content and services amongst all users (McKee, 2011), how to maintain control of key Internet domain names in the global public interest (Mackey et al, 2014) and calls for a ‘Magna Carta for Data’ (Kiss, 2014; O’Sullivan, 2017). Moreover, it is contributing to the dilemma of governments seeking to generate economic, scientific and societal value from existing data assets whilst also protecting citizens from unwanted surveillance and intrusion.…”

The Invisible Digital Identity: Assemblages in Digital Networks

“…While social media began its meteoric rise with budding and now non-existent or nearly non-existent sites like Friendster and MySpace, the focus on digital identity became what a user could conceivably control. However, underneath the veneer of user-controlled digital identity, major corporations and companies began ways to track users' every movement on the web to increase revenue by either direct marketing or selling the data collected to other companies (see McKee, 2011). Thus, digital identity has several definitions-whether it is through controllable information, as is the case with associating a real-life name with digital projects, or the rich portrait of online habits and behaviors assembled from tracking technologies that might suggest an identity that some people may not feel comfortable with companies having access.…”

Deep Circulation

“…The discipline has also discussed the potential harm digital researchers face when collecting data online due to tracking technologies (Hawkes 2007) and how surveillance affects writing program administration and assessment with student portfolios (Crow 2013). More recently, scholarly conversations have focused on the effects of algorithmic surveillance upon identity (Beck 2015); investigations into privacy policies of gaming platforms (Vie 2014); the lasting cultural impacts of doxing private individuals' personal information (Hutchinson 2018); the sharing of consumer data with corporations and governments (McKee 2011;Reyman 2013); and critical digital literacy interventions with regard to health data (Hutchinson and Novotny 2018). Currently absent from these publications is a book-length project within writing studies focused on surveillance both inside and beyond the classroom.…”