The Third Party Diary – Tracking the trackers on Dutch governmental websites

This article discusses how the browser plugin Ghostery contributes to a particular understanding of contemporary consumer surveillance by making Web tracking transparent. The Tracker Tracker is a digital methods tool that, by following Ghostery, detects trackers on specific sets of URLs. It was used to examine all the websites of the Government of the Netherlands on a regular basis. Ghostery also invokes a particular informational genre which has an effect on how we understand the issue of Web tracking. The use of such a tool therefore raises a question: what happens when we repurpose an ‘issu... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Lonneke van der Velden
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
Reihe/Periodikum: NECSUS, Vol 3, Iss 1, Pp 195-217 (2014)
Verlag/Hrsg.: NECS
Schlagwörter: Communication. Mass media / P87-96
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-28987058
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : https://doi.org/10.5117/NECSUS2014.1.VELD

This article discusses how the browser plugin Ghostery contributes to a particular understanding of contemporary consumer surveillance by making Web tracking transparent. The Tracker Tracker is a digital methods tool that, by following Ghostery, detects trackers on specific sets of URLs. It was used to examine all the websites of the Government of the Netherlands on a regular basis. Ghostery also invokes a particular informational genre which has an effect on how we understand the issue of Web tracking. The use of such a tool therefore raises a question: what happens when we repurpose an ‘issue device’ as ‘research device’?