Information We Collect: Surveillance and Privacy in the Implementation of Google Apps for Education

The aim of this study is to show how Google’s business model is concealed within Google Apps forEducation (GAFE) as well as how such a bundle is perceived within one educational organisation,consisting of approximately 30 schools. The study consists of two parts: 1) a rhetorical analysisof Google policy documents and 2) an interview study in a Swedish educational organisation.By making an implicit demarcation between the two concepts (your) ‘data’ and (collected)‘information’ Google can disguise the presence of a business model for online marketing and, atthe same time, simulate the practices and ethics of a free public service institution. This makesit problematic for Swedish schools to implement Google Apps for Education, bearing in mindGoogle’s surveillance practices for making profits on pupil’s algorithmic identities. From a frontend viewpoint of Google Apps for Education, the advantages of the services are evident to theusers, and emerge in the study, whereas back end strategies are relatively hidden.

Published online before print June 27, 2016

PhD thesi