A critical reflection on Big Data: Considering APIs, researchers and tools as data makers

Vis, Farida

doi:10.5210/fm.v18i10.4878

Cited by 73 publications

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“…' communications data (both content and metadata) are shared with a variety of third party F API databases (Vis, 2013) data collection capabilities out to other websites; and, options for users to authenticate their identity on different sites using their social media accounts, enabling platforms to (Sar & Al-Saggaf, 2013;Helmond, 2015;Plantin et al, 2016).…”

Section: Data Sharing Infrastructure and Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

The politics of data friction

Bates

2017

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Structured Abstract PurposeThe aim of the paper is to further develop Paul Edwards' concept of "data friction" by examining the socio-material forces that are shaping data movements in the cases of research data and online communications data. The paper aims to articulate a politics of data friction, identifying the interrelated infrastructural, socio-cultural and regulatory dynamics of data friction, and how these are contributing to the constitution of social relations. Design/methodology/approachThe article develops a hermeneutic review of the literature on socio-material factors influencing the movement of digital data between social actors in the cases of research data sharing and online communications data. Parallels between the two cases are identified and used to further develop understanding of the politics of "data friction" beyond the concept's current usage within the Science Studies literature. FindingsA number of overarching parallels are identified relating to (1) the ways in which new data flows and the frictions that shape them bring social actors into new forms of relation with one another, (2) the platformisation of infrastructures for data circulation, and (3) state action to influence the dynamics of d M resulting from the collective decisions of human actors who experience significantly different levels of empowerment with regard to shaping the overall outcome. Research implicationsThe paper further develops Paul Edwards' concept of "data friction" beyond its current application in Science Studies. Analysis of the broader dynamics of data friction across different cases identifies a number of parallels that require further empirical examination and theorisation. Practical implicationsThe observation that sites of data friction are deeply political has significant implications for all engaged in the practice and management of digital data production, circulation and use. Social implicationsI some of the complex socio-material dynamics shaping emergent data movements across a variety of domains, and inform deliberation at all levels -from everyday practice to international regulationabout how such frictions can be collectively shaped towards the creation of more equitable and just societies. Originality/valueThe paper makes an original contribution to the literature on friction in the dynamics of digital data movement, arguing that in many cases data friction may be something to enable and foster, rather than overcome. It also brings together literature from diverse disciplinary fields to examine these frictional dynamics within two cases that have not previously been examined in relation to one another.

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Section: Data Sharing Infrastructure and Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

The politics of data friction

Bates

2017

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“…Indeed, each form of data gathering carries its own limitations and biases. APIs, for instance, not only provide data but are themselves 'data makers' as well: they construct and provide access to certain (meta)data (Vis 2013). This raises further questions about the reliability and validity of the data, as well as how representative it is (see Cornelius Puschmann and Julian Ausserhofer in this volume).…”

Section: Acquiring: Selecting Sources and Obtaining Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because data are not natural resources existing a priori to be extracted, but rather cultural entities that are co-produced (Vis 2013), both Johanna Drucker (2011) and Kitchin (2014a) make the distinction between data ('given' in Latin) and capta ('taken'), each preferring the latter term. Whichever term is used, data/capta are selected and shaped by humans and their technologies.…”

Section: Two Main Misconceptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The datafied society, studying culture through data

Morsello

2017

Information, Communication & Society

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“…Similarly, Rasmus Helles and Klaus Bruhn Jensen (2013) remind us that data making is a complex process that involves multiple agents. Farida Vis (2013) critically reflects on how both researchers and the tools they use fundamentally impact on both data access and quality. Meanwhile, for questions of interpretation, value and meaning scale up with large data sets, which poses complex methodological challenges (Busch 2014).…”

Section: Politics Of Big Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction. Politics of Big Data

Coté¹,

Gerbaudo²,

Pybus³

2016

Digital Culture &Amp; Society

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This special issue offers a critical dialogue around the myriad political dimensions of Big Data. We begin by recognising that the technological objects of Big Data are unprecedented in the speed, scope and scale of their computation and knowledge production. This critical dialogue is grounded in an equal recognition of continuities around Big Data's social, cultural, and political economic dimensions. Big Data, then, is political in the same way in which identity, the body, gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity are political, that is, as sites of struggle over meaning, interpretations, and categorisations of lived experience. Big Data is political in the way circuits of production, distribution, and consumption are political; that is, as sites where access, control and agency are unequally distributed through asymmetrical power relations, including relations of data production. Big Data is political in the way contemporary politics are being reshaped by data analysis in electoral campaign strategy, and through state surveillance as strikingly evidenced by the Snowden revelations on the NSA and GCHQ. Big Data is also political in the contestation of this advanced scientific practice, wherein the generation of data at unprecedented scale promises a precise and objective measure of everyday life. However, the computational dreams of an N = all verisimilitude -that is, of datasets providing a one-to-one correspondence to a given phenomenon -are haunted by the normative biases embedded in all data. This is not to suggest that Big Data -more specifically processes of datafication 1 -are best or at all understood as socially constructed. Indeed, discursive analysis or unreconstructed social theory cannot fully grasp how data re-articulates the social, cultural, political and economic in a deeply recursive manner. Thus, any political reckoning must equally account for the materiality of data, alongside the logic guiding its processes and the practices that deploy its tools. In short, what are the power relations animating the knowledge generated by data analytics? No politics, just data?As smartphones proliferated last decade, powerful computational media were diffused across time and space into a distributed networks of pervasive data generation. An apolitical vision of Big Data quickly followed. Prominent researchers seized on the potential of this data to fuel new forms of computational social science or what some termed 'social engineering' (Lazier et al. 2009). Enthusiasm for developing rigorous mathematical models and applications to understand and predict complex social phenomena reached a high point with Alex Pentland (2014). His MIT research lab developed a highly anodyne vision of "reality mining" (Eagle/Pentland 2006) our data-driven society, wherein the sheer deluge of data points would help attenuate previous limitations imposed by partial or incomplete samples. Reality mining, as proposed by Pentland, looks for social patterns in the quotidian data we generate to infer our relationships, significant locat...

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A critical reflection on Big Data: Considering APIs, researchers and tools as data makers

Cited by 73 publications

References 0 publications

The politics of data friction

The politics of data friction

The datafied society, studying culture through data

Introduction. Politics of Big Data

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