Holtzbrinck Lecture

Discriminating Data: Identity, Authenticity, and Governance in the Era of Data Analytics

That the Internet creates “echo chambers” has become a truism – a fact revealed most recently by the political effects of fake news. Rather than swimming in boundless cyberspace, we seem trapped in ever-smaller pigeon-holes. To understand how this has happened—and to imagine a different future—Brown University media theorist Wendy Hui Kyong Chun examines the ways in which identity is embedded and revealed through our interaction with new media, from social media platforms to search engines. To correct our course, Chun argues for the use of critical concepts from the humanities to create more public networks.