# Reading Responses (Set 2)

## Online Advertising

### 03/15/21

Since the emergence of the digital era, there has been a massive increase in online advertising, with the objectives of building brand awareness, creating demand, satisfying demand, and driving direct response and sales. Types of display adverts include banners/interstitial banners displayed on a website or between pages on a website, pop ups/pop-unders, floating adverts that appear in a layer over the content, wallpaper adverts, and map adverts. There are also different payment methods such as cost per click, cost per acquisition, flat rate/sponsorships, etc.; some of which benefit the advertiser more and some of which benefit the publisher more. To get their ads online, an advertiser can directly contact a premium media provider, go through an advertising network or advertising exchange, try social media and/or mobile advertising, or use an ad server.

One key differentiator and advantage of advertising is its ability to drive instant sales and conversions. An advert viewer can become a buyer with just a few simple clicks. Another key factor is tracking. Ad servers, which store advertisements and serve them to web pages, are able to track users’ activity or IP addresses using cookies. Thi way, ad servers can target consumers based on things such as their location, network or browser type, connection type, demographic data, and behavior. Tracking can also provide information about how many impressions an advert has, how many times it has been successful in sending visitors to the advertised site, and other information. While tracking can allow advertisers to send more targeted ads, it also toes the fine line of privacy invasion. In addition, consumers now have methods to hinder online advertisers, such as turning off third-party cookies and using AdBlock.

## Online Dating

### 03/23/21

Online dating is often seen as the downfall of modern romance. But Michael Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Stanford who has been studying online dating for years, insists that this is far from the truth. In his Washington Post interview with Roberto A. Ferdman, Rosenfeld states that people who meet their partners online are not more likely to break up, and actually progress to marriage faster than couples who meet offline. In fact, many of the issues people have with online dating (e.g., judging potential partners based on a few pictures) aren’t a result of the technology, but human nature (we judge people based on their appearance in-person too). And sure, there are sites that cater to hookups (e.g., Tinder), but there are also sites that cater to people looking for long-term relationships (e.g., Matched). Additionally, many people’s day-to-day life offers a limited dating pool, and online dating helps with expanding the options of potential partners. This is especially true for middle-aged individuals as well as the LGBT+ community.

That being said, people aren’t always entirely truthful in their online dating profiles. According to Rudder (2010), the three things people lie the most about are their height, their income, and the recency of their photos. Men love to claim they’re six feet tall, when in reality many of them are two inches shorter. People also make 20% less than they say they do, and hold on to the best pictures of themselves while pretending they were taken recently. However, it does make sense to lie about these things, as people tend to go for tall, attractive individuals with their finances together.

While I do have experience with online dating, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t jaded by the experience. In my head, the perfect love story never starts online. However, reading the data provided by Rosenfeld gives me a bit more hope for the future of my online love life.

## Digital Shaping of Self

### 03/29/21

Debate surrounding social media’s effects on self esteem almost always indicate a negative correlation. In Chapter 6 of his book Reading the Comments, Joseph Reagle discusses how living in the age of the Web—and being exposed to the comment section—shapes our sense of self. Self-esteem is defined as the self-evaluation of one’s worth, and this is influenced by social interactions. How we present ourselves to the world and how others react to our presentation will affect our sense of self. This can explain why people feel more confident when looking at their own, carefully curated social media profiles and less confident when they see themselves in others’ photos. As humans, we also have the tendency to compare ourselves to others. Thus, scrolling through other people’s profiles is often associated with an increased belief that others are happier than we are.

In addition, society has an obsession with quantification: people love to rate and rank others. Not only is it a way to assess the relative social standing of each person, but also to demonstrate social power. Some people even ask others to rate their attractiveness despite the likely possibility of receiving hateful comments. All of this plays into the need to socially compare and boost self-esteem.

Another common fear is the increase in narcissism due to online social networks. A 2008 study found that high NPI scores do correlate with higher quantities of Facebook interaction and with the profile’s “attractiveness, self-promotion, and sexiness.” It is easy to see how an environment where one can carefully control their image and maintain hundreds of shallow relationships could be the perfect breeding grounds for narcissism.

I personally believe that being slightly self-absorbed is okay, especially when use of social media often leads to lower self-esteem. If a person chooses to post a selfie where they know they look good, I view it as confidence rather than narcissism. While there are certainly people using social media who only want attention, I believe that promoting self-love should be celebrated rather than criticized.

## Algorithmic Discrimination

### 04/06/21

*Is Google racist?* Examples compiled by Rutherford and White (2016) seem to indicate that Google’s algorithm is racially biased. But is it the technology itself that’s racist, or does the blame lie with the people who make and use these technologies? Johana Burai, a Swedish graphic designer who has conducted research on the subject, says that “the people in society are creating Google, in a way.” Her work aims to “highlight how wider societal biases are brought into relief by the algorithm.” One issue is that algorithms and AI are usually created by white men who may have internal biases that are reflected in their coding. Another problem lies with how Western internet users tend to carry out their searches, which is then picked up by Google’s algorithm. For example, entering the term “Asian women” returns mostly fetishized and sexualized images, and this is likely due to the high number of people who search for Asian women porn. This reflects the way our society as a whole dehumanizes Asian women by viewing them as sex objects. Media bias also affects search results. Stories involving Black youth are often centered around crime, which are then prioritized by the algorithm due to the amount of clicks and shares they receive. Because of this, Googling “three black teenagers” returns mugshots.

However, it’s important to take into account the context within which the pictures are presented. For example, some of the image results for “unprofessional hairstyles” come from curly hair blogs that explain what to do in situations where natural hair is seen as unprofessional. Thus, both the algorithm and the context can affect search results.

To test whether any of the examples mentioned in Rutherford and White (2016) were still true, I tried Googling “beautiful women” and “dreadlocks.” While the term “dreadlocks” returned mostly Black people (with the occasional white person), searching “beautiful women” returned an overwhelming majority of white women. This goes to show that Eurocentric beauty standards are still prevalent to this day. It seems like playing around with Google’s search bar can be a powerful way of revealing our societal biases.

## Authenticity Online

### 04/10/21

When you log onto Twitter, who are you really tweeting for? Is it possible to truly be authentic online? Alice E. Marwick and danah boyd explore some of these questions in their 2010 research paper on the behavior of Twitter users. To conduct their study, they reached out to Twitter users directly, asking questions such as “Who do you imagine reading your tweets?” and “What makes an individual seem ‘authentic’ on Twitter?” While every person who engages in communication—whether it be online or offline—has an imagined audience, different people conceptualize this audience in different ways. Some participants said they were tweeting for “friends,” but “friends” can mean people one knows in real life, or just people one follows. Users with large followings commonly described their audience as “fans” and were more likely to employ strategic communicative techniques to maintain followers. This technique is called micro-celebrity. Others used Twitter as a personal diary and claimed they didn’t tweet for anyone but themselves. This approach is usually viewed as more “authentic” than micro-celebrity strategies. However, there is no such thing as “universal authenticity;” the definition of authenticity changes based on the person doing the judging. The truth is, almost everyone presents themselves differently depending on their audience (both real and imagined). Goffman used the dramaturgical metaphor to explain the process of impression management: we each have “frontstage” and “backstage” identities, and we monitor our frontstage identities more closely because that audience response matters more. And who is to determine if we’re more authentic when self-presenting to our doctor versus our coworker?

I personally believe that having different personas in front of different audiences doesn’t mean you’re an inauthentic person. Obviously, the way you act and speak at a corporate conference is different from the way you might interact on stan Twitter. But as far as I’m concerned, as long as you’re not faking your personality, each persona is just a different facet of your true identity.