[csaa-forum] UNSW Media Futures Seminar: Thao Phan & Scott Wark on 'What personalisation can do for you!; Or, how to do racial discrimination without "race"'

[Michael Richardson]

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A SAM Seminar and Media Futures Hub Event
Thao Phan & Scott Wark | What personalisation can do for you!; Or, how to do racial discrimination without "race"

Between 2016 and 2020, Facebook allowed advertisers in the United States to target their advertisements using three broad “ethnic affinity” categories: “African American,” “U.S.-Hispanic,” and “Asian American.” Superficially, these categories were supposed to allow advertisers to target demographic groups without using data about users’ race, which Facebook explicitly does not collect. This paper uses the life and death of these “ethnic affinity” categories to argue that they exemplify a novel mode of racialisation made possible by machine learning techniques. Adopting Wendy H. K. Chun’s conceptualisation of race “and/as” technology as an analytical frame, this paper focuses on what these categories use race to do. These categories worked by analysing users’ preferences and behaviour: they were supposed to capture an “affinity” for a broad demographic group, rather than registering membership of that group. That is, they were supposed to allow advertisers to “personalise” content for users depending on behaviourally determined affinities. We argue that, in effect, Facebook’s ethnic affinity categories were supposed to operationalise a “post-racial” mode of categorising users. But the paradox of personalisation is that in order to apprehend users as individuals, platforms must first assemble them into groups based on their likenesses with other individuals. This paper uses an analysis of these categories to argue that even in the absence of data on a user’s race—even after the demise of the categories themselves—users can still be subject to techniques of inclusion or exclusion for discriminatory ends.

Thao Phan is a Research Fellow in the ARC Centre of Excellence on Automated Decision-Making and Society and the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University. She is a feminist technoscience researcher who specialises in the study of gender and race in algorithmic culture.

Scott Wark is a Research Fellow for the ‘People Like You: Contemporary Figures of Personalisation’ project, which is funded by a Wellcome Trust Collaborative Award. He is based at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the University of Warwick. He researches online culture, amongst other things.

Thao Phan will present and conduct Q&A.
NOVEMBER
16

12pm – 1pm

REGISTER VIA EVENTBRITE <https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/thao-phan-scott-wark-tickets-202729879527>



Media Futures Hub, the School of the Arts and Media and the Faculty of Arts Design & Architecture acknowledge and pay respect to the Traditional Owners of the land on which we work and live, particularly the Bidjigal and Gadigal Peoples, and their elders past and present. Sovereignty was never ceded, and the struggle for justice continues.
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