View year:

  1. Big data surveillance across fields: Algorithmic governance for policing & regulation.Anthony Amicelle - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    While the academic separation of policing and regulation is still largely operative, points of convergence are more significant than ever in the digital age, starting with concomitant debates about algorithms as a new figure of power. From the policing of illegal activities to the regulation of legal ones, the algorithmization of such critical social ordering practices has been the subject of growing attention. These burgeoning discussions are focused on one common element: big data surveillance. In accordance with such similarities and (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  2.  7
    Politics of data reuse in machine learning systems: Theorizing reuse entanglements.Louise Amoore, Mikkel Flyverbom, Kristian Bondo Hansen & Nanna Bonde Thylstrup - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    Policy discussions and corporate strategies on machine learning are increasingly championing data reuse as a key element in digital transformations. These aspirations are often coupled with a focus on responsibility, ethics and transparency, as well as emergent forms of regulation that seek to set demands for corporate conduct and the protection of civic rights. And the Protective measures include methods of traceability and assessments of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ datasets and algorithms that are considered to be traceable, stable and contained. However, (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  3.  2
    The role of sensors in the production of smart city spaces.Vangelis Angelakis, Jonas Löwgren, Ahmet Börütecene, Rasmus Ringdahl, Katherine Harrison & Desirée Enlund - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    Smart cities build on the idea of collecting data about the city in order for city administration to be operated more efficiently. Within a research project gathering an interdisciplinary team of researchers – engineers, designers, gender scholars and human geographers – we have been working together using participatory design approaches to explore how paying attention to the diversity of human needs may contribute to making urban spaces comfortable and safe for more people. The project team has deployed sensors collecting data (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  4.  2
    Feeling fixes: Mess and emotion in algorithmic audits.Jeanie Austin & Os Keyes - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    Efforts to address algorithmic harms have gathered particular steam over the last few years. One area of proposed opportunity is the notion of an “algorithmic audit,” specifically an “internal audit,” a process in which a system’s developers evaluate its construction and likely consequences. These processes are broadly endorsed in theory—but how do they work in practice? In this paper, we conduct not only an audit but an autoethnography of our experiences doing so. Exploring the history and legacy of a facial (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  5.  5
    Algorithmic accountability in U.S. cities: Transparency, impact, and political economy.Burcu Baykurt - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    This article examines how algorithmic accountability is translated into action at the municipal level in the United States. Based on a review of task forces, ordinances, and policy toolkits from New York City and Seattle, I demonstrate the ways municipalities and local publics operationalize abstract notions of accountability. Municipal interventions often prioritize revealing computational tools (transparency) and their effects on people (impact assessments). While these two forms of accountability are crucial, they may neglect to examine institutions—and how they change—as they (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  6. The problem of researching a recursive society: Algorithms, data coils and the looping of the social.David Beer - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    This commentary article outlines and explores the key problem that faces anyone interested in researching and understanding what might be thought of as a recursive society. It reflects on the problem that is posed by the layering of multiple feedback loops as a result of algorithmic sorting and data processes. This article is concerned with the difficulties of understanding the social where recursive algorithmic processes have repeatedly shaped outcomes, practices, relations and actions over time. This is not just about the (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  7.  5
    A comparative analysis of data governance: Socio-technical imaginaries of digital personal data in the USA and EU (2008–2016). [REVIEW]Kean Birch & Rob Guay - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    Personal data are produced through our daily interactions with digital technologies like search engines, social media, and online shopping, and is often referred to as our “digital exhaust.” It has been characterized as the key resource or asset for our economies in the 21st century. This paper focuses on the socio-technical imaginaries of digital personal data as a way to understand how desired forms of data governance are co-produced with collective understandings of personal data as a political-economic asset. We examine (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  8.  1
    Aiming at the good life in the datafied world: A co-productionist framework of ethics.Margarita Boenig-Liptsin - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    This article proposes an ethical framework to navigate life in the datafied world that combines the relational ethics approach of the philosopher Paul Ricoeur with the idiom of co-production from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Mainstream data and computing ethics approaches, which tend to view ethics itself as a technology to produce particular outcomes, fail to adequately consider the context of the datafied world for ethics. The datafied world is a condition in which data and computing technologies (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  9.  1
    Algorithmic precarity and metric power: Managing the affective measures and customers in the gig economy.Ngai Keung Chan - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    Drawing on a qualitative, multi-case study of three kinds of geographically tethered gig work—ride-hailing, delivery, and domestic services platforms—in the United States, I examine how workers anticipate the influences of metrics, live with metrics, and cope with algorithmic precarity. Data for this project include in-depth interviews with 50 gig workers about their efforts to interpret and manage metrics as part of their everyday work practices. The analysis reveals that participants were anxious about metrics primarily because of the disciplinary outcomes, that (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  10.  1
    Privacy at risk? Understanding the perceived privacy protection of health code apps in China.Wenhong Chen, An Hu & Gejun Huang - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    As a key constituent of China's approach to fighting COVID-19, Health Code apps (HCAs) not only serve the pandemic control imperatives but also exercise the agency of digital surveillance. As such, HCAs pave a new avenue for ongoing discussions on contact tracing solutions and privacy amid the global pandemic. This article attends to the perceived privacy protection among HCA users via the lens of the contextual integrity theory. Drawing on an online survey of adult HCA users in Wuhan and Hangzhou (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  11. Shall AI moderators be made visible? Perception of accountability and trust in moderation systems on social media platforms.Dominic DiFranzo, Natalya N. Bazarova, Aparajita Bhandari & Marie Ozanne - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    This study examines how visibility of a content moderator and ambiguity of moderated content influence perception of the moderation system in a social media environment. In the course of a two-day pre-registered experiment conducted in a realistic social media simulation, participants encountered moderated comments that were either unequivocally harsh or ambiguously worded, and the source of moderation was either unidentified, or attributed to other users or an automated system (AI). The results show that when comments were moderated by an AI (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  12. Cognitive assemblages: The entangled nature of algorithmic content moderation.Benoît Dupont & Valentine Crosset - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    This article examines algorithmic content moderation, using the moderation of violent extremist content as a specific case. In recent years, algorithms have increasingly been mobilized to perform essential moderation functions for online social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, including limiting the proliferation of extremist speech. Drawing on Katherine Hayles’ concept of “cognitive assemblages” and the Critical Security Studies literature, we show how algorithmic regulation operates within larger assemblages of humans and non-humans to influence the surveillance and regulation (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  13. Seeing like a driver: How workers repair, resist, and reinforce the platform's algorithmic visions.Catherine D’Ignazio & Rida Qadri - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    This article theorizes the relationship between two ways of “seeing” and organizing urban mobility markets: the abstract, algorithmic vision of the mobility platform and the experiential, relational vision of the platform driver. Using the case of mobility platforms in Jakarta, we empirically demonstrate how drivers experience the limitations of the platform's visions and how they deploy their own alternative visions of work and the city. We offer this drivers’ “View from Within” as a counterpoint to the visions of the platform, (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  14. A practical role-based approach for autonomous vehicle moral dilemmas.Hubert Etienne - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    Autonomous vehicle moral dilemmas matter less for the particular outcomes of potential accidents than for their role in defining the values of the society we wish to live in. Different approaches have been suggested to determine the ethical settings that autonomous vehicles should be implemented in and identify the legitimate agents for making such decisions. Most of these, however, fail on theoretical grounds, facing severe issues related to moral justifications and compliance to the law, or on practical grounds, being insufficiently (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  15.  1
    Toward a sociology of machine learning explainability: Human–machine interaction in deep neural network-based automated trading.Bo Hee Min & Christian Borch - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    Machine learning systems are making considerable inroads in society owing to their ability to recognize and predict patterns. However, the decision-making logic of some widely used machine learning models, such as deep neural networks, is characterized by opacity, thereby rendering them exceedingly difficult for humans to understand and explain and, as a result, potentially risky to use. Considering the importance of addressing this opacity, this paper calls for research that studies empirically and theoretically how machine learning experts and users seek (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  16. Governing teachers through datafication: Physical–virtual hybridity and language interoperability in teacher accountability.Steven Lewis & Jessica Holloway - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    In this paper, we draw on Foucault's and Deleuze's theorisations of discipline and control, respectively, to understand a teacher accountability system in the US state of Texas: the Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System (hereafter, T-TESS). Specifically, we focus on the interplay of physical and virtual modes of governance – which we develop here as physical–virtual hybridity – and the techniques that make these physical and virtual domains compatible via language interoperability, with T-TESS deployed as a representative empirical case to (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  17. Social data governance: Towards a definition and model.Jun Liu - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    With the surge in the number of data and datafied governance initiatives, arrangements, and practices across the globe, understanding various types of such initiatives, arrangements, and their structural causes has become a daunting task for scholars, policy makers, and the public. This complexity additionally generates substantial difficulties in considering different data(fied) governances commensurable with each other. To advance the discussion, this study argues that existing scholarship is inclined to embrace an organization-centric perspective that primarily concerns factors and dynamics regarding data (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  18.  3
    Fairness perceptions of algorithmic decision-making: A systematic review of the empirical literature.Frank Marcinkowski, Birte Keller, Janine Baleis & Christopher Starke - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    Algorithmic decision-making increasingly shapes people's daily lives. Given that such autonomous systems can cause severe harm to individuals and social groups, fairness concerns have arisen. A human-centric approach demanded by scholars and policymakers requires considering people's fairness perceptions when designing and implementing algorithmic decision-making. We provide a comprehensive, systematic literature review synthesizing the existing empirical insights on perceptions of algorithmic fairness from 58 empirical studies spanning multiple domains and scientific disciplines. Through thorough coding, we systemize the current empirical literature along (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  19. The unbearable (technical) unreliability of automated facial emotion recognition.Martina Mattioli, Andrea Campagner & Federico Cabitza - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    Emotion recognition, and in particular acial emotion recognition (FER), is among the most controversial applications of machine learning, not least because of its ethical implications for human subjects. In this article, we address the controversial conjecture that machines can read emotions from our facial expressions by asking whether this task can be performed reliably. This means, rather than considering the potential harms or scientific soundness of facial emotion recognition systems, focusing on the reliability of the ground truths used to develop (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  20.  2
    States of computing: On government organization and artificial intelligence in Canada.Fenwick McKelvey & Théo Lepage-Richer - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    With technologies like machine learning and data analytics being deployed as privileged means to improve how contemporary bureaucracies work, many governments around the world have turned to artificial intelligence as a tool of statecraft. In that context, our paper uses Canada as a critical case to investigate the relationship between ideals of good government and good technology. We do so through not one, but two Trudeaus—celebrity Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (2015—…) and his equally famous father, former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  21. AI ethics and data governance in the geospatial domain of Digital Earth.Marina Micheli, Caroline M. Gevaert, Mary Carman, Max Craglia, Emily Daemen, Rania E. Ibrahim, Alexander Kotsev, Zaffar Mohamed-Ghouse, Sven Schade, Ingrid Schneider, Lea A. Shanley, Alessio Tartaro & Michele Vespe - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    Digital Earth applications provide a common ground for visualizing, simulating, and modeling real-world situations. The potential of Digital Earth applications has increased significantly with the evolution of artificial intelligence systems and the capacity to collect and process complex amounts of geospatial data. Yet, the widespread techno-optimism at the root of Digital Earth must now confront concerns over high-risk artificial intelligence systems and power asymmetries of a datafied society. In this commentary, we claim that not only can current debates about data (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  22. The Concentration-after-Personalisation Index (CAPI): Governing effects of personalisation using the example of targeted online advertising.Brent Mittelstadt, Sandra Wachter, Chris Russell, Fabian Stephany & Johann Laux - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    Firms are increasingly personalising their offers and services, leading to an ever finer-grained segmentation of consumers online. Targeted online advertising and online price discrimination are salient examples of this development. While personalisation's overall effects on consumer welfare are expectably ambiguous, it can lead to concentration in the distribution of advertising and commercial offers. Constellations are possible in which a market is generally open to competition, but the targeted consumer is only made aware of one possible seller. For the consumer, such (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  23.  8
    Artificial intelligence, human intelligence and hybrid intelligence based on mutual augmentation.Gemma Newlands, Christoph Lutz & Mohammad Hossein Jarrahi - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    There is little consensus on what artificial intelligence (AI) systems may or may not embrace. Although this may point to multiplicity of interpretations and backgrounds, a lack of conceptual clarity could thwart the development of common ground around the concept among researchers, practitioners and users of AI and pave the way for misinterpretation and abuse of the concept. This article argues that one of the effective ways to delineate the concept of AI is to compare and contrast it with human (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  24.  1
    Making sense of decision support systems: Rationales, translations and potentials for critical reflections on the reality of child protection.Maria Appel Nissen & Andreas Møller Jørgensen - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    Decision support systems, which incorporate artificial intelligence and big data, are receiving significant attention in the public sector. Decision support systems are sociocultural artefacts that are subject to a mix of technical and political choices, and critical investigation of these choices and the rationales they reflect are paramount since they are inscribed into and may cause harm, violate fundamental rights and reproduce negative social patterns. Applying and merging the concepts of sense-making and translation, this article investigates the rationales, translations and (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  25. Algorithmic failure as a humanities methodology: Machine learning's mispredictions identify rich cases for qualitative analysis.Jill Walker Rettberg - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    This commentary tests a methodology proposed by Munk et al. (2022) for using failed predictions in machine learning as a method to identify ambiguous and rich cases for qualitative analysis. Using a dataset describing actions performed by fictional characters interacting with machine vision technologies in 500 artworks, movies, novels and videogames, I trained a simple machine learning algorithm (using the kNN algorithm in R) to predict whether or not an action was active or passive using only information about the fictional (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  26.  1
    Towards a political economy of technical systems: The case of Google.Bernhard Rieder - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    This research commentary proposes a conceptual framework for studying big tech companies as “technical systems” that organize much of their operation around the mastery and operationalization of key technologies that facilitate and drive their continuous expansion. Drawing on the study of Large Technical Systems (LTS), on the work of historian Bertrand Gille, and on the economics of General Purpose Technologies (GPTs), it outlines a way to study the “tech” in “big tech” more attentively, looking for compatibilities, synergies, and dependencies between (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  27. Addressing ethical gaps in ‘Technology for Good’: Foregrounding care and capabilities.Irina Shklovski, Sebastián Lehuedé, Funda Ustek-Spilda & Alison B. Powell - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    This paper identifies and addresses persistent gaps in the consideration of ethical practice in ‘technology for good’ development contexts. Its main contribution is to model an integrative approach using multiple ethical frameworks to analyse and understand the everyday nature of ethical practice, including in professional practice among ‘technology for good’ start-ups. The paper identifies inherent paradoxes in the ‘technology for good’ sector as well as ethical gaps related to (1) the sometimes-misplaced assignment of virtuousness to an individual; (2) difficulties in (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  28. Taking a critical look at the critical turn in data science: From “data feminism” to transnational feminist data science.Zhasmina Tacheva - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    Through a critical analysis of recent developments in the theory and practice of data science, including nascent feminist approaches to data collection and analysis, this commentary aims to signal the need for a transnational feminist orientation towards data science. I argue that while much needed in the context of persistent algorithmic oppression, a Western feminist lens limits the scope of problems, and thus—solutions, critical data scholars, and scientists can consider. A resolutely transnational feminist approach on the other hand, can provide (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  29. Algorithmic empowerment: A comparative ethnography of two open-source algorithmic platforms – Decide Madrid and vTaiwan.Yu-Shan Tseng - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    Scholars of critical algorithmic studies, including those from geography, anthropology, Science and Technology Studies and communication studies, have begun to consider how algorithmic devices and platforms facilitate democratic practices. In this article, I draw on a comparative ethnography of two alternative open-source algorithmic platforms – Decide Madrid and vTaiwan – to consider how they are dynamically constituted by differing algorithmic–human relationships. I compare how different algorithmic–human relationships empower citizens to influence political decision-making through proposing, commenting, and voting on the urban (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  30.  52
    Neither opaque nor transparent: A transdisciplinary methodology to investigate datafication at the EU borders.Ana Valdivia, Claudia Aradau, Tobias Blanke & Sarah Perret - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    In 2020, the European Union announced the award of the contract for the biometric part of the new database for border control, the Entry Exit System, to two companies: IDEMIA and Sopra Steria. Both companies had been previously involved in the development of databases for border and migration management. While there has been a growing amount of publicly available documents that show what kind of technologies are being implemented, for how much money, and by whom, there has been limited engagement (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  31.  1
    Learning accountable governance: Challenges and perspectives for data-intensive health research networks.Ghislaine Jmw van Thiel, Thomas Schillemans, Johannes Jm van Delden, Menno Mostert & Sam Ha Muller - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    Current challenges to sustaining public support for health data research have directed attention to the governance of data-intensive health research networks. Accountability is hailed as an important element of trustworthy governance frameworks for data-intensive health research networks. Yet the extent to which adequate accountability regimes in data-intensive health research networks are currently realized is questionable. Current governance of data-intensive health research networks is dominated by the limitations of a drawing board approach. As a way forward, we propose a stronger focus (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  32.  2
    The revolution that did not happen: Telematics and car insurance in the 2010s.Théo Voldoire & Pierre Francois - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    Attempts to use Big Data to transform car insurance pricing in France have failed. Why? Three possible explanations are discussed: organisational and cognitive inertia, normative preventions, and deliberate strategy. This article finds that moral or political reluctance has played only a secondary role in the failure of telematics devices. More important has been the deployment of an experimental strategy that has resulted in the conclusion that in the short and medium term at least, the use of big data to rate (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  33. Digital phenotyping – Editorial.Ger Wackers & Lukas Engelmann - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  34.  1
    Performative innovation: Data governance in China's fintech industries.Jing Wang - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    The financial applications of data technology have enabled the rise of Chinese fintech industries. As part of people's everyday lives, fintech apps have helped companies collect vast amounts of user data for business profit and social good. This paper takes an open-systems approach to study the constructs of this emerging idea of data governance, particularly its operational logic, involved stakeholders, and socio-cultural consequences in the context of fintech industries in China. It asserts that data governance at the company level has (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  35. Social data governance: From reflective practices to comparative synthesis.Jing Wang & Jun Liu - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    This special theme brings together reflections and deliberations regarding the design, implementation, and development of data governance. By addressing “social data governance” as the keyword of the special theme, we aim to further the discussion on a contextual understanding of both the governing foundations and effects of data, dataism, and datafication in different societies. Such a discussion reminds us to pay particular attention to—and thus account for—the social dynamics that underpin and contextualize the design, operation, and promotion of quantified governing (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  36. Public sector information in the European Union policy: The misbalance between economy and individuals.Sophie Weerts & Clarissa Valli Buttow - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    Algorithmic technologies and artificial intelligence are centred on data and generate new business models, known as the data-driven economy. In the European Union context, the development of such new business is accompanied by a regulatory and political framework. An important aspect of this regulatory framework regards the legal conditions that enable the data collection, availability, sharing, use and reuse. Within the larger context, this article analyses the development of the European Union regulatory framework governing the availability, sharing and reuse of (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  37. New geographies of platform capitalism: The case of digital monopolization in Turkey.Melih Yeşilbağ - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    The rise of digital platforms is growingly acknowledged as a pivotal characteristic of contemporary capitalism. A subset of the literature on digital platforms scrutinized the political economy of platform companies, their data-driven business models along with the economic, social, and political consequences of platformization. Yet, this strand has been overwhelmingly interested in Big Tech companies in the United States and China. In this article, I aim to expand the geographical span of this emerging literature by scrutinizing platformization dynamics in Turkey, (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  38.  3
    (Tar)getting you: The use of online political targeted messages on Facebook.Brahim Zarouali, Tom Dobber, Nadia Metoui, Susan Vermeer & Sanne Kruikemeier - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (2).
    This study examines how mainstream political actors and other organizations use political targeted messages. For this purpose, a data set from ProPublica is used. The study examines 55,918 sponsored Facebook ads that were posted by 236 political actors (i.e., political elites and other organizations) in the United States. (1) Topic classification was used to identify policy issues, (2) network analysis to identify the main policy issues from the various political actors, and (3) Sankey diagrams to visualize microtargeted messages. Our findings (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  39.  8
    Taking stock of COVID-19 health status certificates: Legal implications for data privacy and human rights.Ana Beduschi - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    The technological solutions adopted during the current pandemic will have a lasting impact on our societies. Currently, COVID-19 health status certificates are being deployed around the world, including in Europe, the United States and China. When combined with identity verification, these digital and paper-based certificates allow individuals to prove their health status by showing recent COVID-19 tests results, full vaccination records or evidence of recovery from COVID-19. Most countries in the Global South, where vaccination rates are low, have not yet (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  40. Datafication and the practice of intelligence production.Holly Blackmore, Lyria Bennett Moses, Carrie Sanders & Janet Chan - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Datafication of social life affects what society regards as knowledge. Jasanoff’s regimes of sight framework provides three ideal-type models of authorised knowing in environmental data practice. This paper applies Jasanoff's framework for analysing intelligence practice through an exploratory empirical study of crime and intelligence practitioners in a selection of police services in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. The paper argues that the ‘view from somewhere’ captures the essence of existing police intelligence practices in the four countries but (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  41.  10
    Alternative data and sentiment analysis: Prospecting non-standard data in machine learning-driven finance.Christian Borch & Kristian Bondo Hansen - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Social media commentary, satellite imagery and GPS data are a part of ‘alternative data’, that is, data that originate outside of the standard repertoire of market data but are considered useful for predicting stock prices, detecting different risk exposures and discovering new price movement indicators. With the availability of sophisticated machine-learning analytics tools, alternative data are gaining traction within the investment management and algorithmic trading industries. Drawing on interviews with people working in investment management and algorithmic trading firms utilizing alternative (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  42.  4
    Sharing precision medicine data with private industry: Outcomes of a citizens’ jury in Singapore.Annette Braunack-Mayer, Chris Degeling, Stacy Carter, Ainsley J. Newson, E. Shyong Tai, Vicki Xafis, G. Owen Schaefer, Andrew Lau, Serene Ong, Hui Jin Toh, Tamra Lysaght & Angela Ballantyne - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Precision medicine is an emerging approach to treatment and disease prevention that relies on linkages between very large datasets of health information that is shared amongst researchers and health professionals. While studies suggest broad support for sharing precision medicine data with researchers at publicly funded institutions, there is reluctance to share health information with private industry for research and development. As the private sector is likely to play an important role in generating public benefits from precision medicine initiatives, it is (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  43.  3
    Digital phenotyping and the (data) shadow of Alzheimer's disease.Natassia Brenman, Alessia Costa & Richard Milne - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    In this paper, we examine the practice and promises of digital phenotyping. We build on work on the ‘data self’ to focus on a medical domain in which the value and nature of knowledge and relations with data have been played out with particular persistence, that of Alzheimer's disease research. Drawing on research with researchers and developers, we consider the intersection of hopes and concerns related to both digital tools and Alzheimer's disease using the metaphor of the ‘data shadow’. We (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  44.  1
    Computational ethnography: A view from sociology.Phillip Brooker - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    This commentary elaborates on the ideas and projects outlined in this special issue, from a specifically sociological perspective. Much recent work in sociology proposes ‘methods mashups’ of ethnography and digital data/computational tools in different and diverse ways. However, typically, these have taken the form of applying the principles of ethnography to new domains and data types, as if ethnography itself is stable and immutable; that it has a universal set of methodological principles that unify ethnographic practice. Returning to anthropology is, (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  45.  1
    Organizing an “organizationless” protest campaign in the WeChatsphere.Hao Cao - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    The introduction of digital technologies in collective actions seems to have transformed the dynamics of movement organizing and enabled divergent forms of protest organizing. While some studies emphasize “organizationless” organizing in which traditional organizational forms—social movements organizations and formal-bureaucratic structures—have been pushed into the margins, other studies showcase how traditional forms have assumed alternative features, for example, connective leadership and organizations with fluid boundaries. While existing research correctly points out the evolving organizing dynamics and forms in digital activism, few studies (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  46.  4
    ‘The interface of the future’: Mixed reality, intimate data and imagined temporalities.Marcus Carter & Ben Egliston - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    This article examines discourses about mixed reality as a data-rich sensing technology – specifically, engaging with discourses of time as framed by developers, engineers and in corporate PR and marketing in a range of public facing materials. We focus on four main settings in which mixed reality is imagined to be used, and in which time was a dominant discursive theme – the development of mixed reality by big tech companies, the use of mixed reality for defence, mixed reality as (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  47.  1
    Emotional labour in the collaborative data practices of repurposing healthcare data and building data technologies.Marta Choroszewicz - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    This article focuses on emotions, conceptualised as emotional labour, evoked during data practices used to repurpose and enable healthcare data journeys for Finnish public healthcare. Combined approaches from critical data studies and the sociology of emotions were used to contribute to a better understanding of the mundane but often invisible work of the emotions of experts involved in data practices, such as facilitating data journeys and building data technologies. The article is based on a two-and-a-half-year ethnographic study conducted in a (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  48.  2
    Why Personal Dreams Matter: How professionals affectively engage with the promises surrounding data-driven healthcare in Europe.Antoinette de Bont, Anne Marie Weggelaar-Jansen, Johanna Kostenzer, Rik Wehrens & Marthe Stevens - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Recent buzzes around big data, data science and artificial intelligence portray a data-driven future for healthcare. As a response, Europe's key players have stimulated the use of big data technologies to make healthcare more efficient and effective. Critical Data Studies and Science and Technology Studies have developed many concepts to reflect on such overly positive narratives and conduct critical policy evaluations. In this study, we argue that there is also much to be learned from studying how professionals in the healthcare (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  49.  5
    Diversity in sociotechnical machine learning systems.Maria De-Arteaga & Sina Fazelpour - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    There has been a surge of recent interest in sociocultural diversity in machine learning research. Currently, however, there is a gap between discussions of measures and benefits of diversity in machine learning, on the one hand, and the broader research on the underlying concepts of diversity and the precise mechanisms of its functional benefits, on the other. This gap is problematic because diversity is not a monolithic concept. Rather, different concepts of diversity are based on distinct rationales that should inform (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  50.  1
    Political affiliation moderates subjective interpretations of COVID-19 graphs.Ja-Nae Duane, William S. Albert & Jonathan D. Ericson - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    We examined the relationship between political affiliation, perceptual estimates, and subjective judgements of disease prevalence and mortality across three chart types. An online survey exposed separate groups of participants to charts displaying COVID-19 data or COVID-19 data labeled ‘Influenza ’. Block 1 examined responses to cross-sectional mortality data ; results revealed that perceptual estimates comparing mortality in two countries were similar across political affiliations and chart types, while subjective judgements revealed a disease x political party interaction. Although Democrats and Republicans (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  51.  2
    Digital epidemiology, deep phenotyping and the enduring fantasy of pathological omniscience.Lukas Engelmann - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Epidemiology is a field torn between practices of surveillance and methods of analysis. Since the onset of COVID-19, epidemiological expertise has been mostly identified with the first, as dashboards of case and mortality rates took centre stage. However, since its establishment as an academic field in the early 20th century, epidemiology’s methods have always impacted on how diseases are classified, how knowledge is collected, and what kind of knowledge was considered worth keeping and analysing. Recent advances in digital epidemiology, this (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  52.  1
    The material consequences of “chipification”: The case of software-embedded cars.M. C. Forelle - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Today's modern car is an assemblage of mechanical and digital components, of metal panels that comprise its structure and silicon chips that run its functions. Communication and information studies scholars have interrogated the problematic aspects of the programs that run those functions, revealing serious issues surrounding privacy and security, worker surveillance, and racial, gendered, and class-based bias. This article contributes to that work by taking a step back and asking about the issues inherent not in the software running on these (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  53.  2
    Ethnographic data in the age of big data: How to compare and combine.Kristoffer Lind Glavind & Andreas Bjerre-Nielsen - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Big data enables researchers to closely follow the behavior of large groups of individuals by using high-frequency digital traces. However, these digital traces often lack context, and it is not always clear what is measured. In contrast, data from ethnographic fieldwork follows a limited number of individuals but can provide the context often lacking from big data. Yet, there is an under-explored potential in combining ethnographic data with big data and other digital data sources. This paper presents ways that quantitative (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  54.  1
    Ideological variation in preferred content and source credibility on Reddit during the COVID-19 pandemic.Tendai Gwanzura, Elmira Akbaripourdibazar, Nicole Gatto, Christopher Krewson & Wallace Chipidza - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    In this exploratory study, we examine political polarization regarding the online discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic. We use data from Reddit to explore the differences in the topics emphasized by different subreddits according to political ideology. We also examine whether there are systematic differences in the credibility of sources shared by the subscribers of subreddits that vary by ideology, and in the tendency to share information from sources implicated in spreading COVID-19 misinformation. Our results show polarization in topics of discussion: (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  55.  1
    Situating questions of data, power, and racial formation.Kathryn Henne & Renee Shelby - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    This special theme of Big Data & Society explores connections, relationships, and tensions that coalesce around data, power, and racial formation. This collection of articles and commentaries builds upon scholarly observations of data substantiating and transforming racial hierarchies. Contributors consider how racial projects intersect with interlocking systems of oppression across concerns of class, coloniality, dis/ability, gendered difference, and sexuality across contexts and jurisdictions. In doing so, this special issue illuminates how data can both reinforce and challenge colorblind ideologies as well (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  56.  3
    The Thick Machine: Anthropological AI between explanation and explication.Mathieu Jacomy, Asger Gehrt Olesen & Anders Kristian Munk - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    According to Clifford Geertz, the purpose of anthropology is not to explain culture but to explicate it. That should cause us to rethink our relationship with machine learning. It is, we contend, perfectly possible that machine learning algorithms, which are unable to explain, and could even be unexplainable themselves, can still be of critical use in a process of explication. Thus, we report on an experiment with anthropological AI. From a dataset of 175K Facebook comments, we trained a neural network (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  57. Social impacts of algorithmic decision-making: A research agenda for the social sciences.Frauke Kreuter, Christoph Kern, Ruben L. Bach & Frederic Gerdon - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Academic and public debates are increasingly concerned with the question whether and how algorithmic decision-making may reinforce social inequality. Most previous research on this topic originates from computer science. The social sciences, however, have huge potentials to contribute to research on social consequences of ADM. Based on a process model of ADM systems, we demonstrate how social sciences may advance the literature on the impacts of ADM on social inequality by uncovering and mitigating biases in training data, by understanding data (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  58.  2
    The Chilling Effects of Digital Dataveillance: A Theoretical Model and an Empirical Research Agenda.Michael Latzer, Noemi Festic & Moritz Büchi - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    People's sense of being subject to digital dataveillance can cause them to restrict their digital communication behavior. Such a chilling effect is essentially a form of self-censorship in everyday digital media use with the attendant risks of undermining individual autonomy and well-being. This article combines the existing theoretical and limited empirical work on surveillance and chilling effects across fields with an analysis of novel data toward a research agenda. The institutional practice of dataveillance—the automated, continuous, and unspecific collection, retention, and (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  59.  3
    Communicative strategies for building public confidence in data governance: Analyzing Singapore's COVID-19 contact-tracing initiatives.Sun Sun Lim & Gordon Kuo Siong Tan - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Effective social data governance rests on a bedrock of social support. Without securing trust from the populace whose information is being collected, analyzed, and deployed, policies on which such data are based will be undermined by a lack of public confidence. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digitalization and datafication by governments for the purposes of contact tracing and epidemiological investigation. However, concerns about surveillance and data privacy have stunted the adoption of such contact-tracing initiatives. This commentary analyzes Singapore's contact-tracing initiative (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  60.  3
    Governing algorithmic decisions: The role of decision importance and governance on perceived legitimacy of algorithmic decisions.Kirsten Martin & Ari Waldman - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    The algorithmic accountability literature to date has primarily focused on procedural tools to govern automated decision-making systems. That prescriptive literature elides a fundamentally empirical question: whether and under what circumstances, if any, is the use of algorithmic systems to make public policy decisions perceived as legitimate? The present study begins to answer this question. Using factorial vignette survey methodology, we explore the relative importance of the type of decision, the procedural governance, the input data used, and outcome errors on perceptions (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  61.  4
    Smart campus communication, Internet of Things, and data governance: Understanding student tensions and imaginaries.Pratik Nyaupane & Pauline Hope Cheong - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    In recent years, universities have been urged to restructure and re-evaluate their ability to trace and monitor their students as the “smart campus” is being built upon datafication, while networked apps and sensors serve as the means through which its constituents are connected and governed. This paper advances a dialectical and communication-centered approach to the Internet of Things campus ecosystem and provides an empirical investigation into the tensions experienced by students and the ways that these students envision alternative practices that (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  62.  2
    Capitalizing on transparency: Commercial surveillance and pharmaceutical marketing after the Physician Sunshine Act.Piotr Ozieranski & Shai Mulinari - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    How corporations surveil and influence consumers using big data tools is a major area of research and public debate. However, few studies explore it in relation to physicians in the USA, even though they have been surveilled and targeted by the pharmaceutical industry since at least the 1950s. Indeed, in 2010, concerns about the pharmaceutical industry's undue influence led to the passing of the Physician Sunshine Act, a unique piece of transparency legislation that requires companies to report their financial ties (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  63.  1
    Grøn Genstart: A quali-quantitative micro-history of a political idea in real-time.Morten A. Pedersen, Anders Blok, Thyge R. Enggaard & Annika S. H. Isfeldt - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    In this study, we build on a recent social data scientific mapping of Danish environmentalist organizations and activists during the COVID-19 lockdown in order to sketch a distinct genre of digital social research that we dub a quali-quantitative micro-history of ideas in real-time. We define and exemplify this genre by tracing and tracking the single political idea and activist slogan of grøn genstart across Twitter and other public–political domains. Specifically, we achieve our micro-history through an iterative and mutual attuning between (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  64. The ontology explorer: A method to make visible data infrastructures for population management.Annalisa Pelizza & Wouter Van Rossem - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    This article introduces the methodology of the ‘Ontology Explorer’, a semantic method and JavaScript-based open-source tool to analyse data models underpinning information systems. The Ontology Explorer has been devised and developed by the authors, who recognized a need to compare data models collected in different formats and used by diverse systems. The Ontology Explorer is distinctive firstly because it supports analyses of information systems that are not immediately comparable and, secondly, because it systematically and quantitatively supports discursive analysis of ‘thin’ (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  65.  1
    Materialities of digital disease control in Taiwan during COVID-19.Sung-Yueh Perng - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    During the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, a wide range of digital technologies and data analytics have been incorporated into pandemic response models globally, in the hope of better detecting, tracking, monitoring and containing outbreaks. This increased digital involvement in disease control has offered the prospect of heightened effectiveness in all of the above, but not without raising other concerns. This paper contributes to ongoing discussions of the digital transformation in disease control by proposing a materialist analysis of how such (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  66.  16
    Justice, injustice, and artificial intelligence: Lessons from political theory and philosophy.Lucia M. Rafanelli - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Some recent uses of artificial intelligence for facial recognition, evaluating resumes, and sorting photographs by subject matter have revealed troubling disparities in performance or impact based on the demographic traits of subject populations. These disparities raise pressing questions about how using artificial intelligence can work to promote justice or entrench injustice. Political theorists and philosophers have developed nuanced vocabularies and theoretical frameworks for understanding and adjudicating disputes about what justice requires and what constitutes injustice. The interdisciplinary community committed to understanding (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  67.  2
    Computational grounded theory revisited: From computer-led to computer-assisted text analysis.Snorre Ralund & Hjalmar Bang Carlsen - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    The size and variation in both meaning-making and populations that characterize much contemporary text data demand research processes that support both discovery, interpretation and measurement. We assess one dominant strategy within the social sciences that takes a computer-led approach to text analysis. The approach is coined computational grounded theory. This strategy, we argue, relies on a set of unwarranted assumptions, namely, that unsupervised models return natural clusters of meaning, that the researcher can understand text with limited immersion and that indirect (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  68.  5
    When the future meets the past: Can safety and cyber security coexist in modern critical infrastructures?Awais Rashid, Sveta Milyaeva & Ola Michalec - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Big data technologies are entering the world of ageing computer systems running critical infrastructures. These innovations promise to afford rapid Internet connectivity, remote operations or predictive maintenance. As legacy critical infrastructures were traditionally disconnected from the Internet, the prospect of their modernisation necessitates an inquiry into cyber security and how it intersects with traditional engineering requirements like safety, reliability or resilience. Looking at how the adoption of big data technologies in critical infrastructures shapes understandings of risk management, we focus on (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  69.  4
    In search of the citizen in the datafication of public administration.Lisa Reutter & Heather Broomfield - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    The administrative reform of the datafied public administration places great emphasis on the classification, control, and prediction of citizen behavior and therefore has the potential to significantly impact citizen–state relations. There is a growing body of literature on data-oriented activism which aims to resist and counteract existing harmful data practices. However, little is known about the processes, policies, and political-economic structures that make datafication possible. There is a distinct research gap on situated and context-specific empirical research, which critically interrogates the (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  70.  3
    Linguistic justice as a framework for designing, developing, and managing natural language processing tools.Ishita Rustagi, Alicia Sheares, Genevieve Macfarlane Smith & Julia Nee - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    As natural language processing tools powered by big data become increasingly ubiquitous, questions of how to design, develop, and manage these tools and their impacts on diverse populations are pressing. We propose utilizing the concept of linguistic justice—the realization of equitable access to social and political life regardless of language—to provide a framework for examining natural language processing tools that learn from and use human language data. To support linguistic justice, we argue that natural language processing tools must be examined (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  71.  3
    The data will not save us: Afropessimism and racial antimatter in the COVID-19 pandemic.Anthony Ryan Hatch - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    The Trump Administration's governance of COVID-19 racial health disparities data has become a key front in the viral war against the pandemic and racial health injustice. In this paper, I analyze how the COVID-19 pandemic joins an already ongoing racial spectacle and system of structural gaslighting organized around “racial health disparities” in the United States and globally. The field of racial health disparities has yet to question the domain assumptions that uphold its field of investigation; as a result, the entire (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  72.  2
    Carceral algorithms and the history of control: An analysis of the Pennsylvania additive classification tool.Nathan C. Ryan, Darakhshan Mir, Swarup Dhar & Vanessa A. Massaro - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Scholars have focused on algorithms used during sentencing, bail, and parole, but little work explores what we term “carceral algorithms” that are used during incarceration. This paper is focused on the Pennsylvania Additive Classification Tool used to classify prisoners’ custody levels while they are incarcerated. Algorithms that are used during incarceration warrant deeper attention by scholars because they have the power to enact the lived reality of the prisoner. The algorithm in this case determines the likelihood a person would endure (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  73. Individual benefits and collective challenges: Experts’ views on data-driven approaches in medical research and healthcare in the German context.Silke Schicktanz & Lorina Buhr - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Healthcare provision, like many other sectors of society, is undergoing major changes due to the increased use of data-driven methods and technologies. This increased reliance on big data in medicine can lead to shifts in the norms that guide healthcare providers and patients. Continuous critical normative reflection is called for to track such potential changes. This article presents the results of an interview-based study with 20 German and Swiss experts from the fields of medicine, life science research, informatics and humanities (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  74. ‘Real-time’ air quality channels: A technology review of emerging environmental alert systems.Kayla Schulte - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Poor air quality is a pressing global challenge contributing to adverse health impacts around the world. In the past decade, there has been a rapid proliferation of air quality information delivered via sensors, apps, websites or other media channels in near real-time and at increasingly localized geographic scales. This paper explores the growing emphasis on self-monitoring and digital platforms to supply informational interventions for reducing pollution exposures and improving health outcomes at the individual level. It presents a technological case study (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  75.  5
    Consumers are willing to pay a price for explainable, but not for green AI. Evidence from a choice-based conjoint analysis.Markus B. Siewert, Stefan Wurster & Pascal D. König - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    A major challenge with the increasing use of Artificial Intelligence applications is to manage the long-term societal impacts of this technology. Two central concerns that have emerged in this respect are that the optimized goals behind the data processing of AI applications usually remain opaque and the energy footprint of their data processing is growing quickly. This study thus explores how much people value the transparency and environmental sustainability of AI using the example of personal AI assistants. The results from (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  76.  12
    Utopia of abstraction: Digital organizations and the promise of sovereignty.Max Soar & Tim Corballis - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Digital organizations form part of the new wave of blockchain technologies, following Bitcoin and related cryptocurrencies. “Utopia ofion” offers an analysis of the utopian promise of digital organizations through a reading of one such project, Colony. We provide a critique of the ideology of Colony's white paper, supplemented by readings of pages from its website, as a member of a genre of texts that promote their products through seemingly neutral, technical descriptions. Colony's texts suggest an abstract, contextless and scaleless organizational (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  77.  1
    Anthropographics in COVID-19 simulations.Madeleine Sorapure - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Data visualization researchers and designers have explored a range of approaches to ensure that non-expert audiences understand and derive value from their work. Using anthropomorphized data graphics—or anthropographics—is one strategy that can help create a connection between data and audiences. Anthropographics have been defined as “visualizations that represent data about people in a way that is intended to promote prosocial feelings or prosocial behavior.” However, during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, anthropographics were used in data visualizations that had an expanded range of (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  78. In data we (don't) trust: The public adrift in data-driven public opinion models.Slavko Splichal - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    This article seeks to address current debates comparing polls and opinion mining as empirically based figuration models of public opinion in the light of in-depth intellectual debates on the role and nature of public opinion that began after the French Revolution and the controversy over public opinion spurred by the invention of polls. Issues of historical quantification and re-conceptualisation of public opinion are addressed in four parts. The first summarises the history of the rise and fall of the concept of (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  79.  8
    Artificial intelligence ethics by design. Evaluating public perception on the importance of ethical design principles of artificial intelligence.Christopher Starke, Birte Keller & Kimon Kieslich - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Despite the immense societal importance of ethically designing artificial intelligence, little research on the public perceptions of ethical artificial intelligence principles exists. This becomes even more striking when considering that ethical artificial intelligence development has the aim to be human-centric and of benefit for the whole society. In this study, we investigate how ethical principles are weighted in comparison to each other. This is especially important, since simultaneously considering ethical principles is not only costly, but sometimes even impossible, as developers (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  80.  2
    Developing data capability with non-profit organisations using participatory methods.Julia Stoyanovich, Jane Farmer, Alexia Maddox, Kath Albury, Xiaofang Yao & Anthony McCosker - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    In this paper, we explore the methodologies underpinning two participatory research collaborations with Australian non-profit organisations that aimed to build data capability and social benefit in data use. We suggest that studying and intervening in data practices in situ, that is, in organisational data settings expands opportunities for improving the social value of data. These situated and collaborative approaches not only address the ‘expertise lag’ for non-profits but also help to realign the potential social value of organisational data use. We (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  81.  4
    Tradeoffs all the way down: Ethical abduction as a decision-making process for data-intensive technology development.Anissa Tanweer - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Ample scholarship demonstrates that data-intensive technologies have the capacity to cause serious harm and that their developers are obliged to address ethics in their work. This ethnographic paper tells the story of data scientists attempting to instantiate a carefully considered ethical vision into a data infrastructure while balancing competing priorities, negotiating divergent interests, and wrestling with contrasting values. I use their story to develop the concept of “ethical abduction,” which I characterize as an exemplary process by which actors can intentionally (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  82.  1
    Influence government: Exploring practices, ethics, and power in the use of targeted advertising by the UK state.Daniel Thomas, James Stewart, Gemma Flynn & Ben Collier - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    We have identified an emerging tool being used by the UK government across a range of public bodies in the service of public policy - the online targeted advertising infrastructure and the practices, consultancy firms, and forms of expertise which have grown up around it. This reflects an intensification and adaptation of a broader ‘behavioural turn’ in the governmentality of the UK state and the increasing sophistication of everyday government communications. Contemporary UK public policy is fusing with the powerful tools (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  83. Co-designing algorithms for governance: Ensuring responsible and accountable algorithmic management of refugee camp supplies.Mark van Embden Andres, S. Ilker Birbil, Paul Koot & Rianne Dekker - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    There is increasing criticism on the use of big data and algorithms in public governance. Studies revealed that algorithms may reinforce existing biases and defy scrutiny by public officials using them and citizens subject to algorithmic decisions and services. In response, scholars have called for more algorithmic transparency and regulation. These are useful, but ex post solutions in which the development of algorithms remains a rather autonomous process. This paper argues that co-design of algorithms with relevant stakeholders from government and (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  84.  1
    Public views of the smart city: Towards the construction of a social problem.Liesbet van Zoonen, Els M. Leclercq & Emiel A. Rijshouwer - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Digitization and datafication of public space have a significant impact on how cities are developed, governed, perceived and used. As technological developments are based upon political decisions, which impact people’s everyday lives, and from which not everyone benefits or suffers equally, we argue that ‘the smart city’ should be part of continuous public debate; that it should be considered and treated as a social problem. Through nine focus groups, we invited respondents to explore and discuss instances and dilemmas of the (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  85.  1
    Beyond manifestos: Exploring how political campaigns use online advertisements to communicate policy information and pledges.Claes de Vreese & Tom Dobber - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Social media platforms take on increasingly big roles in political advertising. Microtargeting techniques facilitate the display of tailored advertisements to specific subsegments of society. Scholars worry that such techniques might cause political information to be displayed to only very small subgroups of citizens. Or that targeted communication about policy could make the mandate of elected representatives more challenging to interpret. Policy information in general and pledges, in particular, have received much scientific scrutiny. Scholars have focused largely on party manifestos, but (...)
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  86.  1
    “Make our communities better through data”: The moral economy of smart city labor.Preston Welker & Ryan Burns - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Smart cities are now an established context in which data and digital technologies shape urban politics. Despite increased scholarly focus on algorithmic governance, smart cities and their data production still heavily rely on human labor, raising questions about how that labor is recruited and the implications of different recruitment strategies. In this paper, we illuminate the relations and practices mobilized to recruit the labor required to produce, analyze, and enact data that produce smart cities. We argue that smart cities recruit (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  87.  1
    ‘What about the dads?’ Linking fathers and children in administrative data: A systematic scoping review.Jenny Woodman, Margaret O’Brien, Pia Hardelid, Katie Harron & Irina Lut - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Research has shown that paternal involvement positively impacts on child health and development. We aimed to develop a conceptual model of dimensions of fatherhood, identify and categorise methods used for linking fathers with their children in administrative data, and map these methods onto the dimensions of fatherhood. We carried out a systematic scoping review to create a conceptual framework of paternal involvement and identify studies exploring the impact of paternal exposures on child health and development outcomes using administrative data. We (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  88.  4
    Digital contact tracing in the pandemic cities: Problematizing the regime of traceability in South Korea.Chamee Yang - 2022 - Big Data and Society 9 (1).
    Since 2020, many countries worldwide have deployed digital contact tracing programs that rely on a range of digital sensors in the city to locate and map the routes of viral spread. Many critical commentaries have raised concerns about the privacy risks and trustworthiness of these programs. Extending these analyses, this paper opens up a different line of questioning that goes beyond privacy-centered single-axis critique of surveillance by considering digital contact tracing symptomatic of the broader changes in modes of urban governance (...)
    No categories
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
 Previous issues
  
Next issues