15. Cambridge Analytica

It’s been said that personal data is the new oil. Just a few years ago, companies like Cambridge Analytica bought user data from social media companies to create hyper-targeted political ads. Cambridge Analytica isn’t around anymore, but the practice is still with us, it’s evolved, and poses a real challenge to democracies around the world.

In this episode, Heather Freeman interviews:

Dr. Douglas Guilbeault Assistant Professor in the Management of Organizations, University of California - Berkeley;

Dr. Srijan Kumar Assistant Professor, School of Computational Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology;

Dr. David Rand, Associate Professor of Management Science and Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT;

Dr. Samira Shaikh Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the  University of North Carolina at Charlotte;

Dr. Tim Weninger Associate Professor in Computer Science at the University of Notre Dame;

Dr. Samuel Woolley Assistant Professor of Journalism at the University of Austin at Texas.

Recommended Resources

Noujaim, J. & Amer, K. (Directors). (2019). The Great Hack. Netflix. https://www.netflix.com/title/80117542

Edelman, G. (2020, March 3). Why Don’t We Just Ban Targeted Advertising? From protecting privacy to saving the free press, it may be the single best way to fix the internet. WIRED. https://www.wired.com/story/why-dont-we-just-ban-targeted-advertising/

Brown, S. (2020, June 29). Privacy Isn’t a Right You Can Click Away: Senator Sherrod Brown wants to drastically scale back the permitted uses of your personal data—and ban facial recognition outright. WIRED. https://www.wired.com/story/privacy-isnt-a-right-you-can-click-away/

Witt, J., & Pasternack, A. (2019, July 26). The strange afterlife of Cambridge Analytica and the mysterious fate of its data. FastCompany.com. https://www.fastcompany.com/90381366/the-mysterious-afterlife-of-cambridge-analytica-and-its-trove-of-data 

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