The Unequal Gaze: Disparities in Individual Exposure to Digital Surveillance

• In Event: 20220 - Section on Communication, Information Technology, and Media Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Section on Communication, Information Technology, and Media Sociology Roundtable V: Digital phenomena, broadly construed

Abstract

There has been a considerable rise in the use of digital surveillance technologies in recent decades. Every action, click, and swipe leaves behind digital traces. The development of digital technologies has made behaviors that were once private and hidden now visible to external audiences. Across many domains, this behavioral visibility has consequences for how individuals carry out their lives. Digital tracking is especially prevalent in web browsing. Web browsing behaviors, however, are closely linked to our identities and interests. Whose online behavior is made visible by digital tracking technologies? This study investigates how patterns in web behavior expose demographic groups to different degrees of digital tracking. I take a representative sample of web browsing history from 1,200 Americans and emulate their online activity. I visit each website and use tools from computer science to collect information about the presence of digital tracking technologies. I then link exposure to tracking technologies with demographic characteristics to predict a risk score of being tracked online.

Author

• Carson Phillips, Northwestern University