Aggregated digital traces reveal more than individuals intend and prompt greater self-editing

Evidence

But there are flagrant contradictions between the ideals of transparent, public living and the realities of lifestreaming in a community where virtually everyone lifestreams. Lifestreaming creates an additional layer of social information: by digitizing previously unrecorded things and forming, in the aggregate, a whole that reveals more than the sum of its parts, it becomes part of a digital mirror held up to the scene that often reveals more than the participants intended. The arguments, contradictions, and dramas that play out as a result cause people to hold back, restrict, and manage their lifestream. The lifestream becomes a portrayal of a formal, edited self. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 638

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘digital mirror revealing more than the sum of its parts’ resembles the panopticon/surveillance literature, and ‘aggregate reveals more’ prefigures the big-data turn in surveillance studies. — connects to: Digitized trivia aggregates into surveillable portraits that drive self-monitoring anxiety — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 528; Public selves require constant self-monitoring and self-editing labor — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 633; Machine-built data doubles work like human doppelgangers built from others’ perceptions — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 273 (+6 more)
• SEED: Angle: the contradiction between transparency ideology and the actual chilling effect aggregated data produces — a critique of the ‘radical transparency’ movement.

Broader Connections

• Machines can treat everyday digital traces as psychological test items #expands (0.86) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 2375
• Machine-built data doubles work like human doppelgangers built from others’ perceptions #expands (0.82) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 273
• Others’ actions constrain a person’s curated online self-presentation #expands (0.82) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 638
• Self-branding normalizes surveillance and produces strategic, edited selves #expands (0.80) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 721
• A person’s digital self is a strategically edited simulacrum, not a direct reflection #qualifies (0.80) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 547
• Self-branding demands maintaining an edited yet authentic self before an audience #corroborates (0.78) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 507
• Personal branding online creates performative doppelgangers demanding constant attention #qualifies (0.75) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 32