Data-mining

The first element of data gathering I want to focus on is data mining. Essentially what it is is scanning through analytics, or sets of information, and putting them to practical application. As the lecture states, it is usually intended to extract information from a set of data for monetary gain, hence the use of “mining”. One form of data mining, as listed in the lecture, is passive data mining, like Facebook, or social media in general. Essentially it means that vast amounts of data is being input from many people, from many places, which is then analyzed, categorized, and sold to different customers, usually other big businesses, seeking to use to track market trends, and public opinions. Another example of data mining might be personalized ads. Your Google searches, Youtube history, and the like are analyzed, and interpreted by an algorithm, then you are shown ads that might have an impact on you, influencing you to purchase a product, or service. While many might see this as a breach in privacy, companies simply see it as personalizing their marketing to boost sales. Whatever the case might be, it is a very effective form of data gathering, one that might be reversed for use in research.

Nudging

Another form of data use is nudging. Essentially nudging promotes user to be influenced to choose a specific choice in item, or action. It effectively makes them choose what someone wants them to seemingly of their own volition, instead of forcing them to choose it. Nudging often includes gamification, the action of turning something into a game, so as not to appear to obvious, and social proof, where a generally accepted opinion seemingly becomes fact. Gamification can make something seem fun, or harmless while influencing you to think a certain way or while pushing a product on you. Both of these might seem harmless on paper, but used effectively, they can be used to alter your perception of not only products, but people, services, or groups of people if not used carefully, and combined with a person’s own critical thinking skill.

Article Reflection

The article shines a light on the disinformation, and the information tactics used by one of the Trump campaign runners during his Presidential run in 2016. It effectively used nudging to influence people to aligned with Trump, and be more inclined to vote for him. By skewing details of where he grew up, and how he got to his position, he both was able to make people sympathize with their position, and make them doubt the government, and Democratic candidates even more. Not only that, but online troll, and disinformation campaigns were effectively used to nudge people towards political extremes, further dividing people, and influencing them to vote one way or the other when election time came around. They also used gamification, but to an arguable creative degree.
They pitted 2 companies against each other to see who would “win” and earn the campaign’s official business. These business pumped out advertisements, and support pieces for the Trump campaign until finally one lagged behind, and the other won. This made it easier for the employees to not only work for the campaign, without making them feel like they were working for the sake of work. It can also be argues that the campaign made people feel like they were on a certain team, and had to fight to win against the other team, in this case the Democrats, in the election race. This can be argued for each and every election in history however, so it’s not a great example of gamification in this case. In either case, the Trump campaign, and Mr. Parscale effectively used data techniques, and won the very tight 2016 election, highlighting the importance, and the danger of effective data use in the modern day.