Reply to Sian’s comment

Hi Sian

Here is the search I conducted showing 743 returns:

I then checked a few of these in the threads:

None of them displayed any emoticons. I also completed the search using an iPad, to rule out something weird on my PC, but still no emoticons. I then logged onto another Coursera Mooc and conducted the same search:

Interestingly, this did display the emoticon sometimes, but not every time!

What I was wondering – did it have an effect upon the sociableness of the group? Does it effect the tone of the conversations? I have no idea what is going on. It is very interesting though, and I am tempted to start a new thread asking about it. It’ll be too late for the ethnography though.

 

Show and Tell: Algorithmic Culture

My puppy dog Google Instant search results:

puppy dog search   bitch dog search

As expected.  Coincidentally, I came across a list of blacklisted words during another exercise – this list was held by Shutterstock who explain how / why they use a list: “Miscellaneous caveat: Clearly, what goes in these lists is subjective. In our case, the question we use is, “What wouldn’t we want to suggest that people look at?” This of course varies between culture, language, and geographies, so in the end we just have to make our best guess.”  

I also completed the Facebook challenge which did show different results but due to my almost total lack of use/interest in Facebook I was unable to determine why the results differed.

So on to the final challenge – Google Ads. I was under the mistaken impression that I had turned Cookies off, but then I remembered that I had turned them back on to use the Collusion app (a cookie tracking app).  Anyway I had 20 results. Not surprised by the ISPs and Phone Service Providers as I have a very troublesome broadband connection.  But what on earth is Executive Branch?  The Dictionaries entry made me smile as I regularly use the Define or Synonym keyword on Google when I need help :)

interests (Click on the picture for the full list)

My immediate response to this exercise was to opt out of interest based ads on Google.  I really don’t like these; I find it very invasive when these ads appear, I much prefer the random ads.