This week’s discussion may return to some of the same concepts we discussed in the Understanding the Web unit. This time, however, we’re looking at very specific trends that are apparent when searching common terms in Google Image Search. Not surprisingly, the results demonstrate striking representations of race and gender, in particular.

During class discussion, some students may challenge the idea that these search results mean anything or matter very much. This is an opportunity to discuss now societal norms are created and how the internet represents back to us what those norms are. It’s also an opportunity to revisit the discussion of how search works — ultimately, we are seeing the results of an algorithm (coded by Google engineers) as well as the sum total of the content that Google has indexed (from across the Web). Discuss what we have control over (how we represent things on those sites we create) and what we don’t have control over (Google’s algorithms).