Digital engagement
What is digital engagement, who do we engage with, and how is it recorded?
Contents
1. Introduction
This topic is about how we engage digitally with each other, and with organisations/entities. ‘Engagement’ is a deliberately vague term, and by working through this topic, you can decide what you think this means.
In this topic you will:-
- Start by looking at engagement between people, then people and companies, and consider the differences.
- Consider engagement that happens through a digital medium, and engagement that does not, but may be recorded digitally.
- Taking a critical view, consider data gathered about our everyday activities, and whether we should consider this as engagement with whoever is ‘monitoring’ us.
This topic will help you explore the boundaries of your engagement with companies/entities, and reflect on where you draw the line.
So before we get started, take the poll below.
✅ Poll
Read the following prompt then vote below. All responses are anonymous.
Think about whether you engage more with people or organisations.
2. Engaging with each other
Analogue versus digital
In society, there has always been engagement between people. Thanks to technology, there are now ‘digital’ and ‘analogue’ ways we engage with each other. You can choose how you define these terms (it is important to do this when writing about them). I use analogue to mean ‘not directly using digital technology’, for example talking in person generally fits this description (although hearing aids are digital technology).
Sometimes we only describe something as ‘analogue’ after a digital version arrives, leading to retronyms. A 2017/18 Digital Society student mentioned in a session that we now have ‘physical books’ (previously ‘books’) versus ‘ebooks’. Retronyms are linguistic symptoms of technological/societal changes. Thinking about them can help you to explore these changes:
- What retronyms can you think of?
- What changes can you link them with?
- Do they illustrate anything interesting about ‘digital society’?
💬 Contribute
Read the following prompt then add your contribution in the box below. Responses from the same person are the same colour. All comments are anonymous.
How, if at all, is digital engagement between people different from analogue? Why do you think this?
Different aspects of engagement
If you think ‘Yes, but it’s not that simple…’ then you may already have considered a few dichotomies relating to how we engage with each other. Considering an idea and looking deeper to examine assumptions and complexities is an aspect of critical thinking, an important part of this unit.
For example, engagement can be considered face-to-face/remote. This isn’t the same as analogue/digital. Writing a letter can be considered analogue and remote; talking in person is analogue and face-to-face.
We can also class engagement as physical/virtual: talking in person face-to-face can be classed as physical. Is talking on a video call or in virtual reality also ‘face-to-face’? Is it different? In what ways? Does it matter? Some other dichotomies relevant to how people engage with each other include: using digital versus analogue technology; using electric/electronic technology versus not; online versus offline. Are there any others?
Since 2020, there have been significant changes in the ways we engage with each other, with study and with work. You have lived through this, and your experiences of this period are valuable.
Other aspects of engagement worth noting (all mentioned by previous Digital Society participants) are tone, emotion and physical contact. Some people consider these ‘harder’ in digital spaces; do you agree? Have things changed in your lifetime, and do you think things will get easier in future?
A previous participant made a point in a 2018 face-to-face session about synchronous (live) versus asynchronous (delayed) communication. A letter (or email) is asynchronous: you write a letter, then wait for a reply. A face-to-face talk (or Skype) is synchronous: a real-time conversation. This is not the same as analogue/digital, however in about 100 years technology, first analogue, then digital, has moved us from having to be in the same room for a conversation to free video calls around the world. Technology has led to more options for live chat, but concepts such as the double text suggest asynchronous chat is here to stay. Joyce said in a comment:
“I can take 3 days to reply your text message but I sure can reply within 3 seconds if you asked me something in person!”
My view: ‘digital versus analogue’ is a simplification: emails and letters are very similar despite one being digital and one analogue; letters and face-to-face chats are very different despite both being analogue. However there are certain factors which affect engagement between people, and some of these are more common/have more impact in digital or analogue contexts.
✍ ️Contribute: Examples
The Padlet below shows examples of different ways people can engage with each other. Many have been added by graduates of Digital Society. Have a read, and feel free to add anything new. If you can’t access the Padlet, leave a response on this post.
Is there a difference?
You have started to think about whether digital and analogue engagement are fundamentally different. One way to further analyse this is to ask where the engagement happens. Aral Balkan says:
“Facebook wants us to think that it is a park when it’s actually a shopping mall.”
✅ Poll
Read the following prompt then vote below. All responses are anonymous.
Is Facebook more like a park, a shopping mall or neither?
Some past participants have said that while Facebook is like a shopping mall, it is possible (if difficult) to ‘opt out’ of the commercial side by controlling browser/account settings, or using ad blockers. One participant in in a previous version of the course, suggested these services are all-or-nothing: the commercial aspect is the price you pay to be on the platform.
My view is that companies will continue to push boundaries, and what we accept as normal is changing. This is why I want to talk about engagement; we often engage with companies/entities without knowing it.
Taking it offline
This brings us to the idea of engagement between people in ‘private’ (or offline) and surveillance. It is not just your Facebook messages or Google emails which companies have access to. This bonus reading explains that home technology records our ‘offline’ engagements with our permission. Is this too far? It is worth considering what give up by using these services.
✅ Poll
Read the following prompt then vote below. All responses are anonymous.
Are our analogue engagements being recorded too?
3. Engaging with things
Search engines, websites, apps…
Next is the idea that we don’t just engage with people, but also companies and other entities when we do things online, where it is harder to avoid being tracked. One participant mentioned in an anonymous comment box:
“[I] don’t have Alexa turned on as i don’t want my data recorded, kept, disseminated”
Not everyone agrees, however; Tara pointed out it can make life easier:
It’s certainly an asset to have a laptop which has an idea about my preferences and filters out information which it believes I wont be interested in!
✅ Poll
Read the following prompt then vote below. All responses are anonymous.
What do you think of targeted advertising?
Does ‘offline’ exist?
It is also important to consider that our ‘offline’ activity, such as location, can also be tracked. If you use Google Maps, you can view your location history. You might consider this useful — but it’s likely more useful to Google. We are also being tracked by high street companies. If you use a store card, the store can profile you based on your purchase history. Are you OK with this? Further examples of our offline activity which can be digitised include CCTV and phone calls. Can you think of any more?
4. Engagement generates data
“You are the product…”
Our discussion brings us to the idea that “if you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold” (Andrew Lewis). Does this resonate with you? As we have seen, online/offline, social or otherwise, much of our activity is digitised and used by companies. It is worth considering that in these cases, we are engaging with these companies.
…or maybe your data is the product…
This sets the scene for Shoshana Zuboff’s idea of surveillance capitalism. Companies like Facebook are not only mediating our interactions, but also recording them, analysing them, and trying to predict our behaviour. Their models and predictions are the true product, and perhaps Facebook’s purpose is to make you generate data.
This offers another explanation to ‘Facebook listening to your microphone’: perhaps these companies, because of their automated analysis of the masses of data they hold on you, know you better than you do…
But is this really new? Companies collect data on customers, use it to sell stuff, try to sell the data… what’s the big deal? Zuboff argues that the scale of the issue has boomed, leading to a new economic model. What do you think?
My view: in a digital society, it is increasingly easy to capture and store data on people, and advances in computing (e.g. AI) make it easier to analyse and predict based on it, and this has fundamentally changed the way we engage with each other and the world.
…or maybe your data is part of you
Aral Balkan goes further, and suggests that our data is part of us:
“We are sharded beings; the sum total of our various aspects as contained within our biological beings as well as the myriad of technologies that we use to extend our biological abilities.”
One student in a past session suggested that we are cultural beings, and that culture does exist digitally. Perhaps what has changed is that in a digital society, culture can be digitised, as well as created digitally.
I feel that an increasing amount of my knowledge and memories are ‘outsourced to the cloud’ but this is nothing compared to all of the data on me, which I may not even know about.
Risks of digital engagement
Are we more at risk in a digital society? Past participant Heather pointed out in a comment that the internet allows “harassment and abuse to be done anonymously, which has had some devastating consequences”. This is a huge problem on social networks, and may be a way in which digital platforms amplify existing inequalities and prejudices in society.
Who controls the data?
In “Who will save the world from digital colonialism?” Henna Zamurd-Butt argues that data about people is largely controlled by Silicon Valley and the Global North, and because of this, the Internet is not achieving its true potential, but reinforcing biases already present in society. If more of our lives are digitised, it is also easier for our governments to ‘watch us’. This too may lead to furthering of inequality and injustice, and reminds us: if the government can access this data, potentially so can hackers.
5. Summary
Our engagements with people, organisations, and to some extent ‘the world’, online/offline, digital/analogue, are increasingly captured and stored digitally. Much of our engagement online is mediated by big companies. Our engagement can help generate data relating to us, which can be sold, and may lead to predicting or even influencing our behaviour for marketing or otherwise.
This ‘surveillance capitalism’ is controlled by a small number of huge companies, which may give rise to ‘data colonialism’, amplifying inequality and prejudice. The internet is arguably ungoverned; together with the above, this may be a problem. Some people see humans as partly digital/partly data. It is not fully clear who ‘owns’ these parts of us, and the law/our understanding may still be catching up.
It is up to you what you think about all this, if you disagree with any of the viewpoints shared in this topic please share your own opinions and reasoning in your comments and your work. I hope you have enjoyed sharing your ideas and considering the views of others. Please come back to this page any time to add your thoughts, as your opinions develop.
Good luck with the rest of the course and in future. All comments welcome.
