One of the side effects of our excessive use of the Internet, social media, and digital applications, such as on your mobile phone, is the fact that we leave digital traces about what we do and where we go. From posts we like on our Facebook timeline, to the adverts we clicked on, to the location we just shared: we (mostly unconsciously) leave information about ourselves and our interests which can be collected by big corporations thereafter. With these so-called ‘big data’, being bulks of digital information about large groups of people, companies can effectively reach out to their target audience with information specifically aimed at them. In this way, we see advertisements and information about the things companies want us to see. In the light of becoming more conscious about the digital traces we leave, research in this domain is especially relevant.
Take a look at some examples of our projects in this domain: