LibGuides: Information and Media Literacy: Internet Literacy

Internet Literacy

Internet browsers are often created by commercial companies such as Google and Microsoft. Therefore, many internet browsers are designed to enhance a shopping experience and help users find more of what they are interested in. This can have some specific challenges when an internet browser also begins to limit what kinds of news or other information a user sees.

Introduction to Algorithms
"Just as technology has made it easier to create a ton of stuff, it’s also created ways for us to sift through all of this information and find what you’re looking for. But that solution comes with a hidden cost. By tracking your behavior online, sites like Google, Facebook, Netflix and YouTube can learn about you and try and bring stuff specifically for you. That kind of guesswork is called ‘personalization’. Personalization algorithms are complicated math equations that use data collected about your online activity to shape your experience of the information you’re exposed to on the Internet. These algorithms look at your gender, age, location, online activity, such as what you tend to click on, how long you stay on the Web pages you visit and the kinds of things you share on social networks. These search engine algorithms also analyze your online shopping habits, the emails you write and the friends you connect with online. In the process, they create a digital fingerprint unique to you.” (description from the Checkology website)

Website Cookies Explained
"What are cookies? Our animated guide to website cookies, the many functions they have, and how you can control them." (description from the Guardian Animations YouTube site)

Digital Advertising Alliance's Tool
"Some of the ads you receive on Web pages are customized based on predictions about your interests generated from your visits to different Websites in this browser and on other devices you may use. This type of ad customization is sometimes called 'online behavioral' or 'interest-based' advertising. Such online advertising helps support the free content, products, and services you get online. The DAA Principles apply to interest-based advertising and other applicable uses of Web viewing data collected over time and across nonaffiliated Web sites and on other devices.

"Using this browser tool, you can control the collection and use of Web viewing data for interest-based advertising and other applicable uses on this browser, by some or all of the participating companies." (description from the Digital Advertising Alliance website)

Beware online "filter bubbles"
"As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy." (description from the TED website)