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A Digital Methods Summer School 2016 Workshop

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Anne Helmond & Fernando van der Vlist

Carolin Gerlitz & Esther Weltevrede

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Tracking the Trackers

Link to sheets: http://bit.ly/dmi16trackerworkshop

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Agenda

  1. Introduction: Trackers
  2. Tracker tracker tool
  3. Example project: Like Economy
  4. Methodological summary
  5. Tracking exercise

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1. Introduction: Trackers

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“For every explicit action of a user, there are probably 100+ implicit data points from usage; whether that is a page visit, a scroll etc.” (Berry 2011: 152)

Tracking

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  • Every time a web user requests a website, a series of tracking features are enabled: cookies, widgets, advertising trackers, analytics, beacons etc.
  • First party (from website) vs. third party tracker (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google).

Tracking technologies

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  • Ghostery: Browser plugin which detects and allows to block the ‘invisible’ web and prevents a ‘digital footprint’.
  • Detection via tracker library/code snippets [reg ex].
  • Detecting around 2188 trackers.
  • Not uncontroversial: started as NGO, then bought by analytics company Evidon in 2010.

Tracker blocking

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2. Tracker tracker tool

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  • Tracker Tracker: tool built on top of Ghostery by the Digital Methods Initiative (2012).
  • Allows to detect which trackers are present on lists of websites & create a network view.
  • “Repurposing analytical capacities” of privacy app: digital research methods paired with platform & software studies.

DMI Tracker Tracker

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Gerlitz, Carolin, and Anne Helmond. 2013. “The Like Economy: Social Buttons and the Data-Intensive Web.” New Media & Society 15 (8): 1348–65. doi:10.1177/1461444812472322.

3. Example project: Like Economy

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  • Starting point: social media widgets place cookies (Gerlitz & Helmond 2013).
  • These cookies track both platform users and anyone else on the web.
  • All web users potentially feed data into platforms through cookies.
  • RQ: How pervasive are platform cookies on the most visited websites of the web?

Like Economy

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  1. Create a collection of 1000 most-visited websites based on Alexa.com data.
  2. Input into the Tracker Tracker tool.
  3. Visualise results with Gephi.
  4. Colour-code based on platform.

Like Economy: Method

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Facebook trackers

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4. Methodological summary

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Methodological summary

  1. Research question: type of tracker & sites
  2. Website (URL) collection making: existing expert list
  3. Tracker Tracker tool
  4. Visualisation
  5. Analyse results + add layers

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5. Tracking exercise

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Tracking exercise

  1. Team up in pairs. Study health, kids, adult sites?
  2. Get access to the collections made with Alexa.com: http://tiny.cc/TrackURLs.
  3. Enter the list into the Tracker Tracker tool.�Settings: Only look at specified pages.
  4. Save > Output > GEFX (Gephi).
    1. Alternative: Save > Output > CSV
  5. Open in Gephi, use colour settings to visually distinguish between different tracking services/types.

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Tracking exercise

Gephi instructions:

  • New Project > Open Graph File > OK
  • Layout > Choose a Layout > Force Atlas 2
    • Lin Log mode: yes
    • Prevent Overlap: yes
    • Scaling: 15
  • Ranking > Nodes > Degree > Size/Weight (Red Diamond), Min size: 3 Max size: 30 (you can play with these settings).
  • Partition > refresh > type > Apply
  • Preview > Presets > Default Straight > Refresh
  • Export > SVG/PDF/PNG
  • Put your output here

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End! Thank you.