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Big data from the bottom up

Couldry, Nick ORCID: 0000-0001-8233-3287 and Powell, Alison (2014) Big data from the bottom up. Big Data and Society, 1 (2). ISSN 2053-9517

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Identification Number: 10.1177/2053951714539277

Abstract

This short article argues that an adequate response to the implications for governance raised by ‘Big Data’ requires much more attention to agency and reflexivity than theories of ‘algorithmic power’ have so far allowed. It develops this through two contrasting examples: the sociological study of social actors used of analytics to meet their own social ends (for example, by community organisations) and the study of actors’ attempts to build an economy of information more open to civic intervention than the existing one (for example, in the environmental sphere). The article concludes with a consideration of the broader norms that might contextualise these empirical studies, and proposes that they can be understood in terms of the notion of voice, although the practical implementation of voice as a norm means that voice must sometimes be considered via the notion of transparency.

Item Type: Article
Official URL: http://bds.sagepub.com/
Additional Information: © 2014 The Authors
Divisions: Media and Communications
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HE Transportation and Communications
J Political Science > JA Political science (General)
Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
Date Deposited: 16 Jul 2014 15:45
Last Modified: 06 Mar 2024 17:48
URI: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/57941

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