Managing Learning
18 Issues with Data: Personal Identity
Data about us is constantly recorded through our phones and computers. This data is interpreted based on who is recording it and who is looking at it. To take just one example, Google makes its digital version of us, the digital identity, based on what we do on its platforms. It proceeds to label us based on this data and then rearranges what we see on its search engines and apps accordingly. It markets us to companies who might want to market themselves to us.
Activity
Access your “Ad Settings” Profile on Google, Facebook or Instagram. Or if you regularly use another platform, try finding out if they have ad settings and if you can access them. These are part of our digital identity.
Questions for discussion:
- What does your “digital identity” look like? Does it reflect your demographics and interests? Do you agree with this identity?
- How do you think Google decided each of these interests? What data could have been taken into account? These interest categories change frequently and are recursive: an ad interest you are associated with can determine what ad interest you’ll be categorized with next. What can this tell us about profiling?
- Do you agree with scholars such as Cheney-Lippold and Bassett that there is an over-reduction of identity here? Why is this an ethical concern?
- Ethically, does it matter more if these profiles get your interests “right” or “wrong”?
- Does your gender and race play a part in how you are labelled? How does that make you feel?
This activity has been adapted from Identity, Advertising, and Algorithmic Targeting: Or How (Not) to Target Your “Ideal User.“, licenced under CC BY NC 4.0. 1
The labels Google gives us – male, female, young or aged, have nothing to do with our identities, needs or values. Someone can be male if they look at certain websites(say hardware stores) and buy certain items2. Tomorrow, a male can become female if their activity or the activities of a million other humans who contributed to what is male-like-behaviour change. Different companies give us completely different identities based on what interests them.
The same is done to our students when they interact with Personalized learning software and are subjected to learning analytics. Their digital identity, their performance, engagement and satisfaction, as viewed by these systems, is then used to evaluate not only their performance but also the performance of their peers, teachers, schools and the educational system itself3.
Why is this a problem?
- These profiles are often composed based on noisy and incorrect data from various sources and can be very misleading4.
- These digital identities can change how a student sees themselves and others, how teachers see each student, how the system sees each teacher, how the society sees education and pedagogy, and how everyone reacts to decisions and feedback3.
- Yet, these judgements on who someone is are made without their knowledge and