Author:
Ralph Schroeder
Abstract:
Knowledge about society has recently taken a new direction, with groundbreaking studies of digital media. Examples include analyses of Twitter, Wederikipedia, Facebook, Google and smartphone use. These studies have been made possible by the availability of unprecedented amounts of data – although they are often limited by the fact that the data origi-nates from private- sector companies. Another limitation is that they are not well integrated with accounts of other media or existing social research. As we have seen in previous chapters, new media do not fall into the two main traditions in the study of communication – mass ver-sus interpersonal communication. For example, if Facebook users share news among a group of friends, this is different from exchanging news between two people but also different from broadcast news. Or again, if Twitter hashtags are created for particular events, they create an audi-ence around the event rather than being part of one- to- one or broadcast communication. Search engines that tailor results to particular users or groups (the ‘filter bubble’ effect, Pariser 2011) are yet another example. And one more quite different example is Wikipedia, which, despite being one of the most popular websites, does not easily fall into existing cat-egories of sources of information, such as those produced by academic researchers or accredited media professionals. Wikipedia is a promi-nent source of big data research, and one that, unlike many commercial sources, is openly available to researchers.When we examine examples of big data research, then, it will be important to see if it is possible to go beyond the mass versus interper-sonal models. Regardless of whether this is possible, big data research has enabled powerful advances in knowledge about the role of media in soci-ety, reshaping social science towards more quantitative approaches. One common argument against this view is that there is nothing new with big data; data has always been used in various ways and big data is simply an extension of this trend. This chapter departs from that view: big data has initiated a new direction in the kind of knowledge available – but with different implications for research and for practical applications in society-at-large. The two are related, but they have quite different conse-quences: advancing cumulative knowledge in the one case, and enabling more control over audiences or consumers – or in some cases citizens – in the other. This chapter will therefore cover two topics: how research, and particularly media research, has advanced with big data; and how the application of big data knowledge is shaping media uses and has wider social implications. But the first task, especially in light of the ‘nothing new’ argument, is to address the thorny question of defining big data.
Document:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt20krxdr.9?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents