Learning Reflections

Week 2: Creating Websites

Reflection

This week, I learned about the basic components of websites, including the structure and function of HTML and CSS. I gained an understanding of how websites are built and accessed through client–server architecture. By completing the Codecademy course, I developed a foundational grasp of HTML tags, web structures, and CSS styling. Although CSS selectors and cascading rules were initially confusing, I now appreciate how they shape the look and feel of a website. Working with Phoenix Code helped me see the combination of logic and creativity in web design. I look forward to learning more about responsive layouts and interactive design in the future.

Week 3: Web Scraping

Reflection

This week, we explored web scraping and learned that web pages are structured data that can be extracted and analyzed. By targeting specific HTML components, I understood how data can be collected from online sources and transformed into useful information. In practice, I experimented with collecting news headlines and classifying them in a group project. I learned that while web scraping is a powerful research tool, it also raises important questions about data accuracy, permissions, and ethics. This activity helped me connect coding practices with critical thinking about data in digital environments.

Week 4: Data, Power, and Classification

Reflection

This week focused on the theme of “Data, Power, and Classification.” Through the readings by Crawford (2021) and D’Ignazio & Klein (2020), I learned that data is not merely objective information but is embedded with power dynamics and value systems. Reflecting on my own experience with social media, I realized how much data I consent to share without fully understanding how it is used. Algorithms classify and shape what I see online, influencing my perception and participation. This week encouraged me to think critically about data—not as neutral facts, but as products of social, political, and ethical contexts.

Week 5: Data Visualisation

Reflection

In Week 5, we moved from collecting data to visualising it. Using Excel and other tools, I turned the dataset from last week’s manual scraping exercise into bar charts and scatter plots. At first, I assumed that visualisation was a purely technical step, but I quickly realised how many interpretive decisions I had to make: which variables to put on each axis, which categories to highlight, and which data to omit. These choices changed the story the charts seemed to tell about my friends’ posts. Working with visualisations made me aware that charts are not just neutral pictures of reality. They are arguments about what matters in the data and what kind of pattern is worth seeing. I also became more conscious of ethical issues such as anonymising people and avoiding oversimplification when representing their identities through graphs.

Week 6: Identity, Algorithmic Identity, and Data

Reflection

This week, we focused on identity and algorithmic identity. By checking my Google advertising profile and the categories used on social media platforms, I was able to see how companies translate many tiny traces of my activity into a simplified profile. Some categories felt accurate, but others were surprising or even misleading. This experience illustrated Cheney-Lippold’s idea that algorithmic identity is fluid, probabilistic, and constructed from patterns in the data rather than from my own sense of self. At the same time, these classifications are not harmless: they shape what content and opportunities I am exposed to online. Comparing my friends’ posts through Sumpter’s matrix also showed how much my own categorisation work influences the outcomes. The workshop made me more sceptical of how “data about me” can be both partial and powerful.

Week 7: Identities and Generative AI

Reflection

In Week 7, we examined identity in the context of generative AI and experimented with negative prompting. Instead of simply asking a model to produce a good story, I tried to shape the output by specifying what I did not want: no clichés, no overly happy ending, no idealised version of myself. This process made me much more aware of how the model works through prediction and probability, drawing on training data to offer the “most likely” continuation unless I actively push against it. I noticed moments of both frustration and curiosity as the AI repeatedly returned to familiar narrative patterns. Reflecting on this interaction helped me see how generative systems can subtly normalise certain styles of storytelling and identity, and how introducing variation or “wandering off task” can be a way of resisting that homogenising tendency.

Week 8: Digital Ecologies and Practice

Reflection

Week 8 shifted the focus from screens to digital ecologies and more-than-human relations. During the visit to Kirkgate Market, I used my body and senses—smell, sound, touch, and sight—alongside my phone’s camera and recorder to explore human–food relations. Paying attention to where ingredients might have come from, who harvested and transported them, and how they were packaged made me realise how many invisible infrastructures and labour processes are hidden behind everyday digital images of food. The workshop also raised questions about inequality and environmental impact: whose stories are amplified in digital representations of food, and whose experiences remain silent? Using digital tools in this context felt very different from my usual media use; it became a method for sensing entanglements rather than just taking a quick photo. This week expanded my understanding of “digital media” to include complex ecological and more-than-human connections.

Week 9: Creative Hacking, Senses, and Bodies

Reflection

This week introduced creative hacking and Arduino as ways of thinking about digital media, data, and the body. In the Helix space, our group worked with the Love-O-Meter example to measure temperature changes and visualise them through LEDs. On the surface it seemed like a simple technical task, but once we started wiring components and editing the code, I became aware of how many assumptions about “normal” bodies are built into the system: the choice of a baseline temperature, the thresholds that trigger the lights, and the way the sensor translates continuous bodily signals into discrete categories. Small errors, loose wires, or unexpected readings made the device glitch, and those moments of failure were revealing—they showed how fragile the link is between messy lived bodies and neat data outputs. Drawing on Forlano’s discussion of hacking the feminist disabled body, I began to see creative hacking not just as playful engineering but as a critical method. It invites us to question which bodies are centred in design, whose sensory experiences are ignored, and how we might rewire systems to be more inclusive and open to difference. The workshop therefore connected back to earlier weeks on data and classification, but this time through hands-on engagement with circuits, sensors, and code.

Week 10: Interactive Narratives and Twine

Reflection

In Week 10, we turned to interactive and nonlinear storytelling using Twine. Reading about cybertext and ergodic literature helped me understand how interactive stories differ from conventional narratives: the reader is no longer just a passive recipient but becomes an active participant whose choices shape the path and sometimes even the meaning of the text. Playing through existing Twine games made me notice how limited options, dead ends, or surprising branches can produce very different emotional experiences, from frustration to curiosity to empathy. When our group designed our own interactive story about visiting Kirkgate Market and life in Leeds, we had to think simultaneously about structure and affect: where to place decisions, how to balance freedom with coherence, and what feelings we wanted the player to carry away from each ending. I became aware that authoring an interactive narrative is less about controlling a single plot and more about curating a field of possible journeys. This week showed me that digital storytelling can function as a research method as well as a creative practice, inviting audiences to explore complex experiences—such as migration, everyday markets, or city life—through branching, participatory paths rather than a single linear account.