The presentation will focus on the question of how we, as academic researchers, can research questions of online privacy and online surveillance empirically while sampling data for the research context and at the same time criticising modes of sampling personal data and profiling by economic actors. The presentation is linked to and will look at a subject closely related to my Phd dissertation project titled ‘An analysis of how internet users construct their identities in relation to personal data within the dialectic of structure and agency in the context of online surveillance by economic actors’.

The dissertation tries to examine how people construct their identities in relation to personal data on the internet given the context of online surveillance by economic and political actors. Set within the educational sciences, building on Marotzki’s and Jörissen’s theory of structural media education (2009), as well as drawing firstly on theories of identity by Giddens (1991) and Bauman (2003, 2005, 2006) and secondly on questions of structure/agency and control, the dissertation will try to reconstruct how users reflect on their own identities in the light of personal information they provide on the internet as well as information they observe being mirrored back at them by applying a case study approach using data triangulation, including interviews, observations and documents.

In order for the presentation at the ECER 2016, I will extract a single aspect of the dissertation and critically reflect on the question of how it is possible to ethically do research with subjects using their personal data, while at the same time questioning similar practices done by companies for economic reasons. Where are the differences in how personal data is sampled? How can different objectives justify one mode more than the other? The relevance of this question is not only based in current phenomena regarding what is happening with personalised data collected by companies online and its relation to contemporary social theories on topics such as personalisation, individualisation, commercialisation, privacy or surveillance as researched by Turow (2013), Lyon (2005, 2007, 2015), boyd (2012) and many more, but can also be related to the conference’s theme of ‘Leading Education: The Distinct Contributions of Educational Research and Researchers’. Despite the fact that the topic might not directly link to questions of formal education and schools, it raises an important question on the issue of personal profiling, data sampling and privacy in relation to the everyday use of the internet and what implications this might carry for questions of self-determination in how we use the internet and on how we reflect on ourselves in the light of actions being mirrored back as in the case of personalised news feeds and personalised advertising while also critically reflecting on our own data sampling practices as academic researchers and the ethical implications related to this.

Bauman, Z. (2003) Liquid Love, Cambridge: Polity Press Bauman, Z. (2005) Liquid Life, Cambridge: Polity Press Bauman, Z. (2006) Liquid Fear, Cambridge: Polity Press Boyd, d. and Crawford, K. (2012) ‘Critical Questions for Big Data’ in Information, Communication and Society, 15(5), (S. 662-679) Giddens, A. (1991), Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Cambridge: Polity Press. Jörissen, Benjamin and Marotzki, Winfried (2009) Strukturale Medienbildung. Eine Einführung, Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt. Lyon, D. (2005) Surveillance as Social Sorting: Privacy, Risk and Automated Discrimination, London: Routledge Lyon, D. (2007) Surveillance Studies: An Overview, Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons Lyon, D. (2015) Surveillance after Snowden, Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons Turow, J. (2013) The Daily You, New Haven: Yale University Press