Reveal (December 19–20)

Web trackers are pieces of code that run in the background of a web pages to collect and share information about users activities. Online tracking is an integral component of the internet’s business model and it plays a vital role in a larger industry which profits out of our data [1]. During this chapter the students had to browse the web for one hour and extract and visualize the trackers that followed them. See an example of the output.

  1. Browse the web intensively for one hour
  2. Extract the browser history
  3. Input the seed list of URLs in the “Track Trackers” tool
  4. Export the results
  5. Visualize the timeline of the tracking activity and the categories of the third party trackers
  6. Create a web page with a responsive visualization

Tools: Mozilla Firefox, TrackTrackers, RawGraphs, Adobe Illustrator, Ai2Html, Github

Giovanni Abbattepaolo

Daniele Colombo

Michela Colorito

De Dominicis Dalila

Ercolino Lorenzo

Fanelli Chiara

Gabellini Mattia

Galvani Filomena

Ganzerli Margherita

Guerra Mara

Iotti Annalisa

Lanfrancotti Alessandro

Loi Marco

Meneghella Ludovica

Renaudo Siria

Rossi Angela

Sanson Francesca

Silani Giulia

Tresivan Martina

Villari Fernanda

Observe (November 21–22 ). Observe, deconstruct and describe extensively what you see while you are performing an action on a digital platform.

Alter (December 5–6). Modify the visual elements of a graphical interface developing a web extension.

Reveal (December 19–20). Extract and visualize the invisible trackers that follow you in one hour of web browsing.

Re-publish (January 30–31). Analyse and re-publish data coming from a digital platform to renew our understanding of a phenomenon.