Search Results

It’s All in the Big Data: Data, Big Data, and the Grounded Theory Method

Antony Bryant

in Grounded Theory and Grounded Theorizing: Pragmatism in Research Practice

Clarification of ideas around Big Data and the ways in which a clear understanding of GTM offers a sound basis for insightful use of Big Data. Anderson’s challenge – the 21st century version of naïve ... More

Clarification of ideas around Big Data and the ways in which a clear understanding of GTM offers a sound basis for insightful use of Big Data. Anderson’s challenge – the 21st century version of naïve Baonian induction. Digital data as a key source for researchers, but one to be used with care and the same criteria as other sources. Pathologies of Big Data analyses – apophenia; seeing patterns in everything. Mandelbrot’s abductive leap and the analysis of chaos. Metaphors in the understanding of data – mining, refining, construction, discovery. Leetaru’s Culturomics as an example of big data analytics; its strengths and its weaknesses. The continuing necessity for theoretical sensitivity. The paradox of big data – however much exists today, there will be far more by tomorrow.Less

Methods of Researching Online Communities

Dariusz Jemielniak

in Thick Big Data: Doing Digital Social Sciences

The chapter presents the idea of Thick Big Data, a methodological approach combining big data sets with thick, ethnographic analysis. It presents different quantitative methods, including Google ... More

The chapter presents the idea of Thick Big Data, a methodological approach combining big data sets with thick, ethnographic analysis. It presents different quantitative methods, including Google Correlate, social network analysis (SNA), online polls, culturomics, and data scraping, as well as easy tools to start working with online data. It describes the key differences in performing qualitative studies online, by focusing on the example of digital ethnography. It helps using case studies for digital communities as well. It gives specific guidance on conducting interviews online, and describes how to perform narrative analysis of digital culture. It concludes with describing methods of studying online cultural production, and discusses the notions of remix culture, memes, and trolling.Less

False Positives: Opportunities and Dangers in Big-Data Text Analysis1

Geoffrey Rockwell and Stéfan Sinclair

in Hermeneutica: Computer-Assisted Interpretation in the Humanities

What is big data, and what does it have to do with the humanities? The Snowden revelations have drawn attention to the opportunities and dangers to the gathering of large collections of data, ... More

What is big data, and what does it have to do with the humanities? The Snowden revelations have drawn attention to the opportunities and dangers to the gathering of large collections of data, including the collecting of text messages and email. Techniques that digital humanists have used in the study of individual texts are now being scaled up to study large collections. The digital humanities have a valuable historical and ethical perspective on big data analytics. Questions about what to do with too much information go back to Plato. Questions about the completeness of data, the usefulness of metadata, and the value of analytics can help us understand what big data can and cannot do. In particular we need to be careful of false positives, or false predictions based on data too large to check with other methods.Less

Action: Can We Stop Terminal Consumption?

Peter J. Taylor, Geoff O’Brien, and Phil O’Keefe

in Cities Demanding the Earth: A New Understanding of the Climate Emergency

This chapter asks the question, what does this unthinking mean for current anthropogenic climate change policies? This is answered in two ways. First, the concept of urban demand is discussed in its ... More

This chapter asks the question, what does this unthinking mean for current anthropogenic climate change policies? This is answered in two ways. First, the concept of urban demand is discussed in its current manifestation as the product of a global Advertising-Big Data-Social Media complex. Second, the mechanisms behind the immensity of Chinese urban growth in recent decades are described. In their different, but intertwined, ways these two expressions of today’s modernity are pointing irrevocably towards terminal consumption. The only means to stop this happening appears to a reinvention of the city, creating an urban demand for stewarding nature for future generations, a posterity cityLess

Data Privacy

Peter F. Cowhey and Jonathan D. Aronson

in Digital DNA: Disruption and the Challenges for Global Governance

Chapter 8 lays out the political economic trade-offs in privacy protection designs and their implications for the types of privacy risks and constraints on innovations. To delve more deeply, it then ... More

Chapter 8 lays out the political economic trade-offs in privacy protection designs and their implications for the types of privacy risks and constraints on innovations. To delve more deeply, it then contrasts the U.S. and EU approaches. This leads into an analysis of the protracted U.S.–EU disputes on privacy safeguards and the efforts to forge international agreements on privacy protection forged at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. The most promising initiatives will require a significant role for global civil society in governance. The three issues examined in Part III are interlinked. A robust trade regime for the cloud ecosystem requires that common international understandings about cybersecurity and digital privacy also be developed. However, tidy grand bargains are unnecessary to make progress on these linked issues.Less

Digital subprime: tracking the credit trackers

Joe Deville

Mark Featherstone (ed.)

in The Sociology of Debt

This chapter introduces a phenomenon I call ‘digital subprime’. Digital subprime represents a frontier in lenders’ quest for predictive power, involving a growing group of technology startups who are ... More

This chapter introduces a phenomenon I call ‘digital subprime’. Digital subprime represents a frontier in lenders’ quest for predictive power, involving a growing group of technology startups who are entering subprime, payday lending markets in various countries and are lending at high rates of interest to borrowers who often have either poor or not credit histories. In this variant of consumer credit lending, diverse forms of data are processed through forms of algorithmic analysis in the attempt to better predict the repayment behaviour of individuals. This data often appears extremely mundane and to have very little to do with the credit product in hand. The chapter seeks to map the terrain of possibility represented by the diverse forms of data that are rendered accessible to lenders, partly as a basis for future research, and partly to highlight key developments in the present and future ontologies of money.Less

The European Court of Human Rights: Privacy Rights in Europe: Reconciling Privacy and Speech in the Era of Big Data

Ronald J. Krotoszynski Jr.

in Privacy Revisited: A Global Perspective on the Right to Be Left Alone

This chapter considers privacy in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), a supranational tribunal that enforces a kind of pan-European human rights law. The ECHR, established ... More

This chapter considers privacy in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), a supranational tribunal that enforces a kind of pan-European human rights law. The ECHR, established in the immediate aftermath of World War II, has been a leading expositor of human rights values for over 60 years. Consideration of the privacy jurisprudence of the ECHR helps to illustrate some of the points of tangent, and points of departure, between the wider world and the United States. The standard narrative, that Europe prioritizes privacy, whereas the United States prioritizes speech, does hold true—but only to a point. Significant common ground exists between Europe and the United States. This chapter argues that in the age of Big Data, both Europe and the United States will have to use this common ground to find ways of reconciling privacy and speech in the service of democratic self-government.Less

Reflections on the Dark Side of ICT4D

Tim Unwin

in Reclaiming Information and Communication Technologies for Development

Technology is all too often seen as being inherently good, and there are powerful interests limiting the amount of attention paid to the darker side of ICTs and Internet access in particular. ... More

Technology is all too often seen as being inherently good, and there are powerful interests limiting the amount of attention paid to the darker side of ICTs and Internet access in particular. However, these darker aspects are crucial to understanding ICT4D, especially since they can more seriously impact the poor, both countries and people, than the rich. The following main challenges are covered in the chapter: privacy and security; the Surface Web and the Dark Web; cyber-security and resilience; negative aspects of the exploitation of Big Data and the abuse of people through social media; and the increasing dehumanization of people through the use of ICTs and the Internet of Things.Less

‘Big data’ and policy learning

Patrick Dunleavy

in Evidence-Based Policy Making in the Social Sciences: Methods That Matter

This chapter explores how the revolutionary capacity of analysing Big Data to understand human behaviour is only just beginning to be exploited by social science, and it opens new opportunities for ... More

This chapter explores how the revolutionary capacity of analysing Big Data to understand human behaviour is only just beginning to be exploited by social science, and it opens new opportunities for discovery for policy makers. Again, this chapter will explore its social science foundations, some applications to policy and then address strengths and weaknesses.Less

Commons at the Intersection of Peer Production, Citizen Science, and Big Data:: Galaxy Zoo

Michael J. Madison

in Governing Knowledge Commons

This chapter applies the knowledge commons research framework to research in modern astronomy. The case that it examines, Galaxy Zoo, is a leading example simultaneously of a successful global ... More

This chapter applies the knowledge commons research framework to research in modern astronomy. The case that it examines, Galaxy Zoo, is a leading example simultaneously of a successful global citizen science project; of peer production (sometimes known colloquially as crowdsourcing); and of data-intensive science, sometimes referred to as e-science or Big Data science. Galaxy Zoo scientists and volunteers have organized themselves and massive quantities of observational data about the universe in ways that are well suited to study as a case of commons. Galaxy Zoo has applied techniques of knowledge sharing and collaboration to produce unprecedented insights about galaxies. Examining Galaxy Zoo as a case of commons several additional questions to pursue in further commons investigation.Less

Researching Life in the Digital Age

Sabina Leonelli

in Data-Centric Biology: A Philosophical Study

Chapter 6, which is targeted at anyone interested specifically in the life sciences, examines the implications of my analysis of data-centric science for biology as a discipline and for the knowledge ... More

Chapter 6, which is targeted at anyone interested specifically in the life sciences, examines the implications of my analysis of data-centric science for biology as a discipline and for the knowledge thus gained about living organisms. I consider three examples of successful data integration within the field of plant science, which I take to exemplify three different modes of data integration in biology as a whole, each with its own goals, means and ways of valuing and assessing data. I then use this analysis to stress how differences in how data are elected, analyzed and integrated may challenge existing conceptions of what counts as scientific knowledge in the first place. Finally, I highlight the opportunities offered by data-centric research as well as the dangers and misconceptions associated with big data rhetoric and practices, paying particular attention to related processes of inclusion and exclusion, and the ways in which data infrastructures can affect the visibility and future development of research traditions both within and beyond the life sciences.Less

FDA’s Public Health Imperative: An Increased Role for Active Postmarket Analysis

Efthimios Parasidis

in FDA in the Twenty-First Century: The Challenges of Regulating Drugs and New Technologies

This chapter focuses on current and emerging issues related to post-market analysis of medical products. It argues that the future of the FDA as a public health agency is largely dependent on how ... More

This chapter focuses on current and emerging issues related to post-market analysis of medical products. It argues that the future of the FDA as a public health agency is largely dependent on how well the agency leverages its mandate and resources to address the limitations of pre-market review and expand the instances in which post-market analysis is required.Less

Final Remarks

Dariusz Jemielniak

in Thick Big Data: Doing Digital Social Sciences

This chapter includes the final remarks about conducting digital social studies. It summarizes the book briefly and encourages to start own independent projects. This monograph has presented the ... More

This chapter includes the final remarks about conducting digital social studies. It summarizes the book briefly and encourages to start own independent projects. This monograph has presented the variety of approaches and tools to conduct social research of and through the online world. It explained why the Internet ought to be the subject of sociological studies, and why even traditional social sciences projects ought to include elements of online research. It identified three trends that are strictly connected with the development of communication technology and networks (online transformation of interpersonal relations, crisis of expert knowledge, and the sharing economy). It indicated their importance in many areas, and the need for deep and recurring social science analyses due to the high changeability of the phenomena. It then described the main quantitative approaches, focusing on those that do not require long-term specialist training. It highlighted those qualitative methods that may be used to interpret quantitative research and be a starting point for qualitative analysis. It outlined the possibilities of doing online cultural studies—studying products of Internet culture as a valid method of doing social sciences. Finally, it outlined the ethical considerations that every author of a digital study ought to consider.Less

Conclusion: Bringing Meiklejohn to Privacy: On the Essential Complementarity of Privacy and Speech

Ronald J. Krotoszynski Jr.

in Privacy Revisited: A Global Perspective on the Right to Be Left Alone

This concluding chapter brings this project to an end and draws on the iconic work of Professor Alexander Meiklejohn to mount a sustained argument that privacy and speech are, at bottom, ... More

This concluding chapter brings this project to an end and draws on the iconic work of Professor Alexander Meiklejohn to mount a sustained argument that privacy and speech are, at bottom, fundamentally complementary, rather than conflicting, human rights. Meiklejohn famously argued that free speech merited constitutional protection because it was integral to the process of democratic self-government. This chapter argues that in the era of Big Data, privacy is no less integral to democratic self-government than speech. It also considers the ways in which privacy and speech are more complementary then we commonly suppose them to be, because privacy and speech are both necessary conditions for democracy to function. This chapter also provides a summary and overview of some of the more salient potential lessons that a comparative law survey of privacy law provides.Less

Inputs: “Human Bookkeeping”: The Informatics of Documentary Identity, 1913^–1937

Colin Koopman

in How We Became Our Data: A Genealogy of the Informational Person

The central argument of How We Became Our Data is that over the past century we have become informational persons whose lives are increasingly conducted through an information politics. This chapter ... More

The central argument of How We Became Our Data is that over the past century we have become informational persons whose lives are increasingly conducted through an information politics. This chapter tracks emergent informational persons in the contexts of the bureaucratizing paperwork of the standardized birth certificate in the United States. Haphazard at the turn of the last century, the standardization of birth registration took three decades of effort beginning in 1903, and involved a panoply of agencies including the Census Bureau, the Children’s Bureau, the American Medical Association, and the American Child Health Association. The project was considered completed when, in 1933, every state was registering 90 percent of its births. Shortly after the development of the informational infrastructure that made this early ‘Big Data’ project possible, the Social Security Board would assign Social Security numbers to more than 90 percent of eligible American workers in just three months in the Winter of 1935. Building on the work of political scientist James Scott, this chapter attends to the formats of birth certificates and standard registration in order to excavate the informational conditions at the heart of the most important moments of registration in the lives of Americans today.Less

At the Interface: Multimodal Sensing and Intelligent Learning Systems: The Dynamic Transformation of the Cityscape and Its Ongoing Study

Bill Seaman

in Digital Cities: Between History and Archaeology

The contemporary city is quickly changing in line with the quixotic nature of today’s array of computational media. As a result, we need to begin to create new technological methodologies to aid in ... More

The contemporary city is quickly changing in line with the quixotic nature of today’s array of computational media. As a result, we need to begin to create new technological methodologies to aid in the study of the cityscape over time. This chapter presents some interesting ideas, given that the physical nature of buildings and material infrastructures change at a different rate from that of contemporary digital media. In terms of the cityscape, the digital media and their presence in differing forms are evermore ubiquitous. The author’s approach is to combine two areas of study—cyber-archaeology and media archaeology—in the service of future research. The notion is to create intelligent new systems for the archiving and perusal of multimodal media. He proposes new computationally intelligent approaches to generative virtual environments and relational databases. Also, he points to the nature of context and the limits of current computing in terms of discerning that context. And he asks: As humans we can quickly size up situations, shifting conceptual contexts without a problem; can we build new polysensing systems to help augment the machinic understanding of context and define a vast compendium of relationalities, as well as develop new multimodal search methodologies? This would help us create contemplative media contexts that lend insights into our ongoing learning in terms of research and cultural understanding of the present, enfolding multiple chosen perspectives.Less

User Layer

Benjamin H. Bratton

in The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty

This chapter discusses the sixth and top layer in The Stack, the User layer. It describes how Users initiate chains of interaction up and down layers, from Interface to Earth and back again. It sees ... More

This chapter discusses the sixth and top layer in The Stack, the User layer. It describes how Users initiate chains of interaction up and down layers, from Interface to Earth and back again. It sees the “user” as a contemporary mediated image of the self, one that is often reduced to narrow and utilitarian frames, but also open to a diverse variety of possible human and non-human agencies. The user position can both over-individuate that agent’s sense of self and also radically multiply it. For example, data generated by Users and producing traces and shadows of their worldly transactions, initially creates a high-resolution portrait of a single user (for example as seen in the Quantified Self movement) but as overlapping external data streams are introduced, the coherency the user’s subjectivity is dissolved by the overdetermination by external relations and forces. Any durable politics of the User must understand this dynamic of platform sovereignty.Less

Multiplex Modeling of Society

János Kertész, János Török, Yohsuke Murase, Hang-Hyun Jo, and Kimmo Kaski

in Multiplex and Multilevel Networks

The chapter “Multiplex Modeling of Society” discusses aspects of multiplexity in modeling society. Networks of social interactions are paradigmatic examples of multiplexity. It was recognized long ... More

The chapter “Multiplex Modeling of Society” discusses aspects of multiplexity in modeling society. Networks of social interactions are paradigmatic examples of multiplexity. It was recognized long ago by social scientists that the best way to interpret the network of different kinds of human relationships is a multiplex network, where each layer corresponds to a particular type of relationship, for example, between kin, friends, or co-workers. Until recently, only small social networks could be studied, due to the limited size of the datasets collected by traditional methods used in sociology. However, over the past 15 years, this situation has changed substantially due to the large scale of human sociality-related datasets becoming increasingly available. This chapter sums up the “stylized facts” obtained from Big Data, shows how Granovetterian structure can be modeled in a multiplex setup, and discusses modeling channel selection to analyze the sampling bias introduced by single-channel data.Less