Six Provocations for Big Data

@article{Boyd2011SixPF,
  title={Six Provocations for Big Data},
  author={Danah Boyd and Kate Crawford},
  journal={Economics of Networks eJournal},
  year={2011}
}
  • D. Boyd, K. Crawford
  • Published 21 September 2011
  • Computer Science
  • Economics of Networks eJournal
The era of Big Data has begun. Computer scientists, physicists, economists, mathematicians, political scientists, bio-informaticists, sociologists, and many others are clamoring for access to the massive quantities of information produced by and about people, things, and their interactions. Diverse groups argue about the potential benefits and costs of analyzing information from Twitter, Google, Verizon, 23andMe, Facebook, Wikipedia, and every space where large groups of people leave digital… 
View on SSRN
osf.io
546 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
19
Background Citations
199
Methods Citations
12
Results Citations
2

546 Citations

Citation Type

Citation Type

Interactions with big data analytics
TLDR
It is no surprise today that big data is useful for HCI researchers and user interface design, and A/B testing is a standard practice in the usability community to help determine relative differences in user performance using different interfaces.
‘ Big Data ’ Myths , challenges , and lessons
This paper argues that there have always been ‘big data’ in the humanities, and challenges commonly held myths in this regard. It does so by discussing the case of transnational research on dispersed…
What are the threats and potentials of big data for qualitative research?
TLDR
The potentials of big data for qualitative research are examined, providing recommendations to bring together complementary research endeavors that map large scale social patterns using big data with qualitative questions about participants’ subjective perceptions, rich expression of feelings, and reasons for human action.
Exploring Big Data Environment for Conversation Data Analysis and Mining on Microblogs
TLDR
A new approach to retrieve conversation on microblogging sites that combine Big Data environment and social media analytics solutions is proposed to solve the information overload problem within Big data environment.
Concepts and Technologies of Big Data Management and Hadoop File System
TLDR
This paper presents an overview of big data technologies Map Reduce and Hadoop environment the current issues with these technologies.
Trade‐Offs, Limitations, and Promises of Big Data in Social Science Research
The promise of “big data” is a grand one. The collection and aggregation of massive datasets and the development of analytical tools by which to study these data is part of cutting-edge efforts…
The Value of Using Big Data Technologies in Computational Social Science
TLDR
The article details the process that led to the discovery of social information landscapes within the Twitter social network, highlighting the experience of dealing with social media datasets, using a funneling approach so that data becomes manageable.
Big Data Analytics: From Threatening Privacy to Challenging Democracy
TLDR
This paper identifies long-term privacy implications which may undermine fundamental features of democracy such as fair elections and political equality of all citizens and argues that big data analytics raises the need to develop alternative narratives to the concept of privacy.
The Value of Using Big Data Technologies in Computational Social Science
TLDR
The process that led to the discovery of social information landscapes within the Twitter social network is detailed, highlighting the experience of dealing with social media datasets, using a funneling approach so that data becomes manageable.
Big data privacy issues in public social media
TLDR
This paper discusses privacy implications and potential of the emerging trend of geo-tagged social media, and presents a concept with which users can stay informed about which parts of the social Big Data deluge is relevant to them.
...
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 69 REFERENCES
Trending: The Promises and the Challenges of Big Social Data
TLDR
Since its formation in 2008, NEH Office of Digital Humanities has been systematically creating grant opportunities to help humanists work with large data sets to address how "big data" changes the research landscape for the humanities and social sciences.
IWantPrivacy : Widespread Violation of Privacy Settings in the Twitter Social Network
TLDR
A large-scale collection of data from the Twitter social network is performed by means of the publicly available application programming interface (API) they provide and reveals the growing trend where users defeat Twitter’s simple privacy mechanism of “protecting one's tweets” by retweeting a protected tweet.
Memory Practices in the Sciences
TLDR
This lively and erudite look at the relation of the authors' information infrastructures to their information, Geoffrey Bowker examines how, over the past two hundred years, information technology has converged with the nature and production of scientific knowledge.
The Computational Turn: Thinking About the Digital Humanities
TLDR
It is rare to find an academic today who has had no access to digital technology as part of their research activity, but email, Google searches and bibliographic databases are become increasingly crucial, as more of the world libraries are scanned and placed online.
The Development of Social Network Analysis: A Study in the Sociology of Science
TLDR
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that social network analysis is a flourishing enterprise, but there has been no comprehensive account of the field’s origins, its development, and the reasons for its apparent success, according to Linton Freeman.
Tarde's idea of quantification
Numbers, numbers, numbers. Sociology has been obsessed by the goal of becoming a quantitative science. Yet it has never been able to reach this goal because of what it has defined as being…
The end of theory: The data deluge makes the scientific method obsolete
TLDR
The ability to capture, warehouse, and understand massive amounts of data is changing science, medicine, business, and technology, and so will the opportunity to find answers to fundamental questions.
The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You
Author Q&A with Eli Pariser Q: What is a Filter Bubble? A: Were used to thinking of the Internet like an enormous library, with services like Google providing a universal map. But thats no longer…
Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites
TLDR
It is argued that Friendship helps people write community into being in social network sites and supports pre-existing social norms yet these sites introduce an environment that is quite unlike that with which the authors are accustomed.
Tastes, ties, and time: A new social network dataset using Facebook.com
...
...