Whorkshop,Data, Power, and Classification

Record the learning and feedback on the Digital Practice course in the first semester.

2025-10-24

Data collection has become a tyrannical power for media companies. Today, rejecting data collection often means being locked out of using a platform entirely. Binary gender categories—often reduced to the app-provided choices of “male” or “female”—have come to dictate our digital experiences. Yet when creating an online user account—not to mention applying for a national passport—the choice between “male” or “female,” and only “male” or “female,” is almost always the sole option (D'Ignazio, C. and Klein, L.F., 2020). This binary framework directly influences the content apps recommend to users, reinforcing rigid categorizations that fail to reflect the diversity of human identities. The Week 4 preparatory task asked me to examine the data collection practices of my frequently used social media platform, Redbook. I accessed its settings to review the permissions I had granted: for location access, camera, and photo/video permissions, I selected “always ask”; I denied permissions for microphone, music and audio, messages, contacts, calendar, and nearby devices. Beyond these core permissions, Redbook also requested access to my clipboard (which I set to “while using the app”), device motion and orientation (for which I selected “always allow”), and “manage app chain startup” (which I enabled, allowing Redbook to launch other apps like Baidu). Following this permission audit, I documented the recent posts Redbook recommended to me to observe how my settings and data might shape its content suggestions. During the Week 4 workshop, we were tasked with designing a survey in the role of a data analytics company collaborating with higher education institutions. The objective was to collect data that would reflect students’ topic preferences. Our group centered on the theme “AI Usage in Academic Settings” and developed a 13-question questionnaire tailored to capture students’ perspectives, experiences, and attitudes toward integrating AI tools into their schoolwork. This exercise not only honed our ability to design targeted data-collection instruments but also made us reflect on how survey design—from question framing to topic selection—shapes the quality and relevance of the data gathered.