This week’s two readings revolve around search engine use and the way users and others interact with them. Article one is Data Voids: Where Missing data can easily be exploited by Michael Golebiewski and Article two is Data Craft: The Manipulation of Social Media Metadata by Amelia Acker.
This week is about manipulation and how one can benefit from this act. People use different situations within the world like breaking news or they outdated information and concepts to latch on to – as spoken about in article one. Data voids is a new term for me (much like every other week – I am constantly looking up things on Google – which coincidentally, is a major subject this week.) But the term, as I can understand it, is a void of information on the internet. So when someone uses Google or Bing and the subject they are wanting to find is obscure and does not return very many results, then the data void happens. At this point, in some situations, such as a breaking news story on a subject that previously did not have many return hits, but all of a sudden does because people are reporting on it, then media manipulators take notice. I am not entirely sure if media manipulators are even human, I think they are, but I did not glean from the article if they were bots or human. But anyways – “Unfortunately, the time between the first report and the creation of massive news content is when manipulators have the largest opportunity to capture attention” (Golebiewski, 20). Media manipulators can manipulate the data voids to cause problematic content or even cause serious harm. Is this where we get fake news from?
Something occurred to me as I was reading this week as well – Social Media sites, such as YouTube or Twitter, have their own search engines within the website. I have never really realized this (I mean, I know I can search within the site), but knowing they have their own sophisticated search engine has made me wonder what other types of websites have their own search engines. Or what type of site would need one?
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