In Uncertain Archives: Critical Keywords for Big Data, editors Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, Daniela Agostinho, Annie Ring, Catherine D’Ignazio and Kristin Veel bring together scholars to think about various key terms associated with big data. This is a valua…
Category: big data
Who benefits from data for good?
The central proposition of ‘data for good’ is that corporations should publicly share data sets derived from their business activities across various areas of the economy to improve and guide policymaking. Based on their study of contributors to the Bi…
2019 In Review: Research Tools & Tech
Digital technologies continue to reshape and reimagine core research practices, from transcribing interviews, to creating entire texts autonomously. This list brings together some of the top posts on research technologies that have featured on the LSE Impact Blog in 2019. Disrupting transcription – How automation is transforming a foundational research method The transcription of verbal and non-verbal social interactions is […]
Book Review: The Costs of Connection: How Data is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism by Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias
In The Costs of Connection: How Data is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism, Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias argue that the quantified world is not a new frontier, but rather the continuation and expansion of both colonialism and capitalism. This book shines in using the theory underpinning the idea of data colonialism to articulate sites of resistance, writes […]
As schools become suffused with ed-tech, is the only response to constant surveillance the right to remain silent?
The growing prevalence of ed-tech in schools has prompted concerns over the ability of students (and parents) to develop informed decisions towards how, why, when and who uses school data. As technologies increasingly make record of students’ every word and move, Velislava Hillman asks whether the constant monitoring, micromanagement and data collection of students can guarantee a safe environment for […]
Coding for and as social science
An increasingly large share of human activity now takes place in online digital environments. However social researchers are predominantly trained to investigate and interpret a pre-digital world. In this post Mark Carrigan and Phil Brooker argue that social researchers need to increasingly engage with code and coding in order to understand contemporary society. As one step in this direction and […]
Using LinkedIn for Social Research
Different social media platforms allow different levels of access to the data they hold for academic research. In this cross-post Daniela Duca explores some of the ways in which LinkedIn has been used by social scientists and provides a list resources for researchers looking to work with LinkedIn data. Back in 2012, when LinkedIn was close to the 200 million users […]
Big Qual – Why we should be thinking big about qualitative data for research, teaching and policy
When social scientists think about big data, they often think in terms of quantitative number crunching. However, the growing availability of ‘big’ qualitative datasets presents new opportunities for qualitative research. In this post, Lynn Jamieson and Sarah Lewthwaite explore how ‘big qual’ can be deployed as a distinct research methodology to develop new forms of qualitative research and elucidate complex interactions […]
Our Profile(d) Selves: How social media platforms use data to tell us who we should be
Social media platforms have become an everyday feature of modern life. One feature common to these platforms is the creation of a user profile. These profiles are vital for social media companies to make money from data analytics and targeted advertising. In this post, Lukasz Szulc explores how social media platforms translate this data-driven business model into the design and […]
What does Facebook’s #tenyearchallenge tell us about public awareness of data and algorithms?
Helen Kennedy reflects on the recent #tenyearchallenge trend. Looking at responses to the challenge, she considers what they tell us about the public understanding of data and the companies that utilise it. Drawing on qualitative and survey data on the levels of public awareness, she finds that what the public knows about data continues to be unclear. Facebook, Instagram and […]