top of page

This site was designed with the

website builder. Create your website today.Start Now

Zumi Fering-Yoshioka

Dual Phone Users

Surveillance in Social Media

Teaching social media users to recognize how algorithms and data collection quietly shape what they see, and who they become.

About Me

My name is Zumi Fering-Yoshioka. I am a Film and Media Studies major at UCSB, graduating in June 2027.

My interests include what the entertainment industry produces and its role in shaping how we see and interpret our reality, not just through storytelling and content, but the structural and economic processes behind it. Studying film and media has reinforced this interest, as much of what I have learned centers on a single underlying question: who is making the decisions behind what audiences consume, and why.

This question directly informed my choice of topic for the course WRIT 105M, surveillance in social media. Social media platforms function, in many respects, as their own media industry, one that produces content calibrated specifically to sustain user engagement. This course provided an opportunity to examine that process in depth, and to consider its broader implications for the people who use these platforms daily.

Portfolio

Portfolio

Padlet

This research archive organizes over 30 sources into seven categories tracing the progression of my topic, from what surveillance capitalism actually is, to how data gets collected, how algorithms curate what people see, how that shapes identity, and the real-world, legislative, and public health consequences that follow. Sources span academic journals, investigative journalism, podcasts, data visualizations, documentaries, and social media campaigns, reflecting the research process behind every other project in this portfolio.

Social Media Project

Social Media Project

This piece is a six-part "field guide" to social media, structured as a set of observations that build on each other: platforms are designed to hold your attention, your feed isn't the same as anyone else's, the ads you see are built from what you engage with, nothing you post truly disappears, there are real consequences to what you do online, and all of it slowly shapes how you see the world. Aimed at teens and young adults, the piece uses a consistent visual language, corner tick marks and specimen-style labels that echo the language of an actual field guide, and closes with a resource for mental health support rather than ending on critique alone.

Text/Image Project Alternative Option

Text/Image Project Alternative Option

This piece uses a collage of familiar objects, app icons, a fingerprint, a dog, a shopping cart full of beauty products, to visualize the different types of data a phone quietly collects about its user. Layered over the collage, a hand holds a phone displaying the line "Your phone knows you better than you know yourself," arguing that predictive data profiling can piece together a more complete picture of a person's habits and preferences than the person may consciously recognize in themselves.

Text/Image Project

Text/Image Project

This piece uses a photo of a footprint being photographed on a phone, marked with a symbol showing it can't be deleted, to argue that even small, ordinary actions online leave a permanent trace. Paired with a line from journalist John Battelle comparing digital footprints to sand, something that should fade but instead lasts forever, the image is aimed at teens and young adults who use social media daily without thinking much about what actually happens to what they leave behind.

bottom of page