# Practical exercises
#### On this page are the 4 practical excercises required for the class.

### Excercise: Web Search and Evaluation
#### Google Search
- What would you query to see how many pages on the English Wikipedia site mention “Northeastern University”? How many results did you get?
- I got 73,200 results in .7 seconds after searching on 'en.wikipedia.org' northeastern university. My query included searching Northeastern University in the section for 'all these words' the site or domain being 'en.wikipedia.org'
- What would you query to see Web pages about the skate fish but no pages about an “ice rink”?
- My query for this is searching skate fish in the all these words section and entering '"ice rink"' in the none of these words section.

- What would you query to see Web pages about the Northeastern Huskies from the first day of 2001 through the last day of 2002?
- I would query Northeastern Huskies then add 2001 and 2001 to the 'this exact word or phrase' section. This will bring back both pages that have to do with those two dates, and pages that are copywrited for those dates as well.
- Find me the top image of a pair of penguins with a “free to use, share or modify, even commercially” license, sometimes referred to as “labeled for reuse with modification.”

#### Web Credibility
- Find a Web page of questionable credibility and apply some of the criteria discussed by Valenza and Northern Michigan University.

For web credibility I went into my spam folder in gmail and found an offer from Fidelity Life for a life insurance quote up to 250,000$. Already finding the email in my spam was a red flag with respect to authority. The question of "Is it clear who is responsible for the contents of the page? " was answered by the sender email address being "OC4OC69V.OC4OC69V@4z33purd.u". Though facinatingly as far as accuracy is concerend, this page did have an indication of qualifications/reference as there was a badge and link to their page on the *Better Business Bureau's* website which demonstrated a less than 1 star rating for the business. The page's accuracy also continued as the copy on the page was was written formally and without any spelling errors. The biggest issue that leads to the questioning of the credibility is the lack of addtional information a combination of lacking on authority, accuracy, and coverage. The website only really asks for information and doesnt give anything more. Overall, though the website is better than some questionable websites out there, it is clearly lacking in strong answers to a variety of questions in the NMU's criteria.

### Filter and label your email
##### My Label for NEU-CDA
##### Utilizing Labels in the modern age.

      Labels are a powerful tool. They direct what we see and how we see it making decisions about our opinions before we can make them for ourselves. From email filters to filtering algorithms on social media sites. Building on our previous practical exercise, I utilized the spam filter in Gmail to find an unreputable source to investigate. Automatically before I had any other evidence that any email within this filter was unreputable, I had already made the assumption that the emails had been filtered out because they were spam and that all the emails there would be thus uncredible. This is also an example of a filter bubble. Because of this filter, and the additional filters in my Gmail account (primary, social, promotions, updates) my email life has been curated to what google thinks I like to see and is important to me. I rarely ever view the emails that fall under social and even less often promotions unless I am searching for something that may have been 'lost' in my email. I do, however, regularly see updates in my primary email folder from different publications I read, and notes from friends and colleagues that I value. Additional messages from people, businesses, and publications have been filtered out of my life and without much effort from me, my life has been curated to what google thinks I want. Email filters are just a small part of the larger filter and algorithm bubbles across online media platforms.
      My bubble grows as I look on social media. Logging onto Facebook and viewing my newsfeed the first five posts that come up are a mix of updates from friends and one advertisement. But these aren't random as we know. One of my passionate hobbies is scuba diving, I get tagged in underwater photos with friends, and though I rarely post, when I do it is about diving. So unsurprisingly the first five posts are from four different people I am friends with (out of the over 1,485 friends I have) that are active divers. The fifth piece was an advertisement for a camera lens. A camera lens that I had looked at on b&h camera shop's website over the weekend. Facebook, through its extreme targeted advertising tools, had found a product that I had previously looked at and now put it in my newsfeed. So my newsfeed has both offered me a product that I've been considering buying and offered me information about my friends that are engaging in an activity that I regularly engage in. What Facebook didn't do was share with me information that is relevant to my life but that I don't have a major online presence with. Facebook didn't offer any news information about something outside of diving or promote that one of my close friends (who posted roughly an hour after one of the posts that landed on my feed) was getting engaged. Facebook didn't offer any information it didn't feel was right for me. I had seen what facebook thought was important to me and nothing more. After reading thew backchannel report on facebooks internal study, I wonder if this is something that falls under the same vail as political news. The study dictated that there is a correlation but a small one as to what facebook shows me and what I would be interested and clicked on (percentages depending on political beliefs). I wonder if this affects my personal life? Would I anyway only have heard about these four diving updates and one advertisement? I doubt it, given that my friend texted me to tell me he got engaged and no one texted me in the span of a few hours around when I checked facebook about their diving. This phenomenon, this curation, is impactful. It drives what we see daily and what we understand. Filters and filtering algorithms make a huge impact on our lives and should continue to be built on to balance what we see on a daily basis.

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### Privacy Footprint

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