The Use of IP Addresses to Track and Visualise Global Digital Cultures — Can It Be Done?

Digital culture is a multifaceted notion where digital trends are constantly growing in the field of culture and art including different aspects of convergence of cultures, media and information technologies, which have influenced many new forms of communication. As Lev Manovich stated that the Internet on a global scale is ‘not well organised and constantly expanding’, this has raised issues of copyright, originality and has changed various industry roles.

The Internet has evolved into a platform where all communication occurs. More communication occurs over the Internet then face-face communication. Farrel (2004, p.xx) states ‘The Internet is a rapidly evolving entity, as the amount of traffic increases and advances in hardware technology are made, new demands are placed on the inventors of Internet protocols.’ The Internet is used for social and professional use. The public does not only use sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to publish personal and professional profiles but also use hundreds of other websites to publish their work. This large platform of tools cannot only be accessed ultimately anywhere but can be used by everyone across the globe at the same time.

The diverse range of sites and the easy accessibility for professionals and non-professionals to post their work online raises the question of authenticity. How can this be monitored and tracked over the Internet? How can we track and visualise global digital cultures? To develop an answer, it is important to explore how data over the Internet is tracked across the board.

The subjects people search in their browsers are constantly being tracked. Each time a person searches a topic in a search engine such as Google, this information is automatically traced. The information is tracked as everyone has a barcode that is swiped each time a person enters cyberspace.

Any information the person places online is tracked by hidden scanners, which scan our personal barcodes. The majority of computers with an Internet connection consist of a private and public IP address. The rest of the world sees the public IP address such as a web server, though a private IP address is used within a person’s own network and essentially for private communication among local devices. Webpages that capture the users IP address may use this information to track the web activity of a specific computer. Each user has their own IP address and if the webpage tracks this address, the computer used to connect to the webpage can be identified.

The IP address makes data and content searched through our browsers easier to track, which can then be used to analyze the person’s online and social behaviour. Our online activity is constantly being monitored and under surveillance by higher powers that we fundamentally have no control over.

Over the past few years various websites and communication tools have become integrated into our lives. As people continuously use these tools everyday the IP address allows for data entered on these sites to be tracked and can also help identify how many times a site has been visited and what content was most often searched. For example; if you continuously ‘You Tube’ your favourite song, that song will come up as a ‘recommended video’ to watch the next time you go on You Tube. This is also evident when a person uses Facebook or Twitter. As a person likes a page on their Facebook account, only pages that are similar in subject will be recommended. This tracking device is used to identify the users interest and overall online activity.

Tracking devices like the IP address also allows marketing companies to monitor and track potential target publics based on what the user searches online. Government agencies use this IP address to target people’s opinions on global subjects. Different industries use this to source out talent in various fields.

So how can we track and visualize global digital cultures or regulate them? Belanger (2011, p. 107) states that ‘ information privacy refers to the desire of individuals to control or have some influence over data about themselves’. The collection of data and privacy of our data has become something beyond our control and potentially an area that cannot be regulated.

As every Internet user worldwide has an IP address, this IP address can be arranged in categories. Two IP addresses can be used where one can be to identify the country, state or city where the content has been produced and the other the profession of the user. For example an IP address from Australia, Melbourne with a journalism profession.

References:

Belanger, C (2011) Privacy in the Digital Age: A Review of Information Privacy Research in Information Systems. Article: Vol. 35, No 4, p, 1017-1078. ISSN: 02767783, Accession Number: 67123613. p 107

Farrel, A (2004) ‘The Internet and It’s Protocols: A Comparative Approach p. xx

Image: http://www.rightspeak.net/2013/06/what-can-government-surveillance.html