scholarly journals Bought and Sold: Exploring the Effects of Big Data on User Agency and Commodification

Author(s):  
Kristia M. Pavlakos

Big Data1is a phenomenon that has been increasingly studied in the academy in recent years, especially in technological and scientific contexts. However, it is still a relatively new field of academic study; because it has been previously considered in mainly technological contexts, more attention needs to be drawn to the contributions made in Big Data scholarship in the social sciences by scholars like Omar Tene and Jules Polonetsky, Bart Custers, Kate Crawford, Nick Couldry, and Jose van Dijk. The purpose of this Major Research Paper is to gain insight into the issues surrounding privacy and user rights, roles, and commodification in relation to Big Data in a social sciences context. The term “Big Data” describes the collection, aggregation, and analysis of large data sets. While corporations are usually responsible for the analysis and dissemination of the data, most of this data is user generated, and there must be considerations regarding the user’s rights and roles. In this paper, I raise three main issues that shape the discussion: how users can be more active agents in data ownership, how consent measures can be made to actively reflect user interests instead of focusing on benefitting corporations, and how user agency can be preserved. Through an analysis of social sciences scholarly literature on Big Data, privacy, and user commodification, I wish to determine how these concepts are being discussed, where there have been advancements in privacy regulation and the prevention of user commodification, and where there is a need to improve these measures. In doing this, I hope to discover a way to better facilitate the relationship between data collectors and analysts, and user-generators. 1 While there is no definitive resolution as to whether or not to capitalize the term “Big Data”, in capitalizing it I chose to conform with such authors as boyd and Crawford (2012), Couldry and Turow (2014), and Dalton and Thatcher (2015), who do so in the scholarly literature.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristia M. Pavlakos

Big Data1is a phenomenon that has been increasingly studied in the academy in recent years, especially in technological and scientific contexts. However, it is still a relatively new field of academic study; because it has been previously considered in mainly technological contexts, more attention needs to be drawn to the contributions made in Big Data scholarship in the social sciences by scholars like Omar Tene and Jules Polonetsky, Bart Custers, Kate Crawford, Nick Couldry, and Jose van Dijk. The purpose of this Major Research Paper is to gain insight into the issues surrounding privacy and user rights, roles, and commodification in relation to Big Data in a social sciences context. The term “Big Data” describes the collection, aggregation, and analysis of large data sets. While corporations are usually responsible for the analysis and dissemination of the data, most of this data is user generated, and there must be considerations regarding the user’s rights and roles. In this paper, I raise three main issues that shape the discussion: how users can be more active agents in data ownership, how consent measures can be made to actively reflect user interests instead of focusing on benefitting corporations, and how user agency can be preserved. Through an analysis of social sciences scholarly literature on Big Data, privacy, and user commodification, I wish to determine how these concepts are being discussed, where there have been advancements in privacy regulation and the prevention of user commodification, and where there is a need to improve these measures. In doing this, I hope to discover a way to better facilitate the relationship between data collectors and analysts, and user-generators. 1 While there is no definitive resolution as to whether or not to capitalize the term “Big Data”, in capitalizing it I chose to conform with such authors as boyd and Crawford (2012), Couldry and Turow (2014), and Dalton and Thatcher (2015), who do so in the scholarly literature.


Author(s):  
Yannick Dufresne ◽  
Brittany I. Davidson

This chapter assesses big data. Within the social sciences, big data could refer to an emerging field of research that brings together academics from a variety of disciplines using and developing tools to widen perspective, to utilize latent data sets, as well as for the generation of new data. Another way to define big data in the social sciences refers to data corresponding to at least one of the three s of big data: volume, variety, or velocity.. These characteristics are widely used by researchers attempting to define and distinguish new types of data from conventional ones. However, there are a number of ethical and consent issues with big data analytics. For example, many studies across the social sciences utilize big data from the web, from social media, online communities, and the darknet, where there is a question as to whether users provided consent to the reuse of their posts, profiles, or other data shared when they signed up, knowing their profiles and information would be public. This has led to a number of issues regarding algorithms making decisions that cannot be explained. The chapter then considers the opportunities and pitfalls that come along with big data.


2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E. Swain ◽  
Chandra Sripada ◽  
John D. Swain

AbstractThe past few years have shown a major rise in network analysis of “big data” sets in the social sciences, revealing non-obvious patterns of organization and dynamic principles. We speculate that the dependency dimension – individuality versus sociality – might offer important insights into the dynamics of neurons and neuronal ensembles. Connectomic neural analyses, informed by social network theory, may be helpful in understanding underlying fundamental principles of brain organization.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Michael Weinhardt

While big data (BD) has been around for a while now, the social sciences have been comparatively cautious in its adoption for research purposes. This article briefly discusses the scope and variety of BD, and its research potential and ethical implications for the social sciences and sociology, which derive from these characteristics. For example, BD allows for the analysis of actual (online) behavior and the analysis of networks on a grand scale. The sheer volume and variety of data allow for the detection of rare patterns and behaviors that would otherwise go unnoticed. However, there are also a range of ethical issues of BD that need consideration. These entail, amongst others, the imperative for documentation and dissemination of methods, data, and results, the problems of anonymization and re-identification, and the questions surrounding the ability of stakeholders in big data research and institutionalized bodies to handle ethical issues. There are also grave risks involved in the (mis)use of BD, as it holds great value for companies, criminals, and state actors alike. The article concludes that BD holds great potential for the social sciences, but that there are still a range of practical and ethical issues that need addressing.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-223
Author(s):  
Ahedi Syukro Sahudi ◽  
I Nyoman Sudapet ◽  
Hamzah Denny Subagyo

This research was conducted with the aim of knowing the relationship between product quality and price with the interest of buying consumer Ole-Ole Futsal Bung Tomo. This type of research uses a quantitative approach. The sample in this study were 30 respondents taken by the snowball effect method. The data analysis technique in this study usedcorrelation test analysis Spearman rank. The calculation process was aided by theapplication program Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (IBM SPSS Statistics 20). The results of this study indicate that a correlation of 0.877 means that it is very strong and based on calculations, the product quality variable with consumer buying interest has a sig value of 0.000 <0.05, so Ho is rejected, the product quality is significantly associated with consumer buying interest. And the price variable shows that there is a correlation of 0.738 which means strong and based on calculations, the price variable with consumer buying interest has a sig value of 0.000 < 0.05 so Ho is rejected, then the price is significantly associated with consumer buying interest.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilde Heynen

Making Home(s) in Displacement critically rethinks the relationship between home and displacement from a spatial, material, and architectural perspective. Recent scholarship in the social sciences has investigated how migrants and refugees create and reproduce home under new conditions, thereby unpacking the seemingly contradictory positions of making a home and overcoming its loss. Yet, making home(s) in displacement is also a spatial practice, one which intrinsically relates to the fabrication of the built environment worldwide. Conceptually the book is divided along four spatial sites, referred to as camp, shelter, city, and house, which are approached with a multitude of perspectives ranging from urban planning and architecture to anthropology, geography, philosophy, gender studies, and urban history, all with a common focus on space and spatiality. By articulating everyday homemaking experiences of migrants and refugees as spatial practices in a variety of geopolitical and historical contexts, this edited volume adds a novel perspective to the existing interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of home and displacement. It equally intends to broaden the canon of architectural histories and theories by including migrants' and refugees' spatial agencies and place-making practices to its annals. By highlighting the political in the spatial, and vice versa, this volume sets out to decentralise and decolonise current definitions of home and displacement, striving for a more pluralistic outlook on the idea of home.


1999 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 119
Author(s):  
José Manuel Martín Morillas

In this paper it is argued that, despite the welcome psycho-social emphasis in educational linguistic theories witnessed in recent decades, and with it, a rapprochement of the social sciences to the psychological sciences, the relationship between these fields has not gone far enough. The actual challenge is a move towards the unification of the social, psychological and language sciences (anthropology and sociology; cognitive science; and linguistics). A step in this interdisciplinary direction is offered by the discipline called 'cognitive anthropolinguistics', and its central concept of 'cultural cognition'. The paper discusses the implication of this concept for the field of educational linguistics, followed by a brief illustration of a cognitive-cultural application of that concept, namely the concept of 'ethnic stereotype', as part of a socio-cultural guide for a cross-cultural pedagogical grammar.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Petra Tlčimuková

This case study presents the results of long-term original ethnographic research on the international Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai International (SGI). It focuses on the relationship between the material and immaterial and deals with the question of how to study them in the sociology of religion. The analysis builds upon the critique of the modernist paradigm and related research of religion in the social sciences as presented by Harman, Law and Latour. The methodology draws on the approach of Actor-Network Theory as presented by Bruno Latour, and pursues object-oriented ethnography, for the sake of which the concept of iconoclash is borrowed. This approach is applied to the research which focused on the key counterparts in the Buddhist praxis of SGI ‒ the phrase daimoku and the scroll called Gohonzon. The analysis deals mainly with the sources of sociological uncertainties related to the agency of the scroll. It looks at the processes concerning the establishing and dissolving of connections among involved elements, it opens up the black-boxes and proposes answers to the question of new conceptions of the physical as seen through Gohonzon.


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