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Deborah Lupton
University of Canberra
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Deborah Lupton
Faculty of Arts & Design, University of Canberra
(Blog post originally published on my blog This Sociological Life, 11 May 2015:
https://simplysociology.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/the-thirteen-ps-of-big-data/)
Big data are often described as being characterised by the 3 Vs: volume (the large scale
of the data); variety (the different forms of data sets that can now be gathered by digital
devices and software); and velocity (the constant generation of these data). An online
search of the Vs of big data soon reveals that some commentators have augmented
these Vs with the following: value (the opportunities offered by big data to generate
insights); veracity/validity (the accuracy/truthfulness of big data); virality (the speed at
which big data can circulate online); and viscosity (the resistances and frictions in the
flow of big data) (see Uprichard, 2013 for a list of even more Vs).
These characterisations principally come from the worlds of data science and data
analytics. From the perspective of critical data researchers, there are different ways in
which big data can be described and conceptualised (see the further reading list below
for some key works in this literature). Anthropologists Tom Boellstorff and Bill Maurer
(2015a) refer to the 3 Rs: relation, recognition and rot. As they explain, big data are
always formed and given meaning via relationships with human and nonhuman actors
that extend beyond data themselves; how data are recognised qua data is a sociocultural
and political process; and data are susceptible to rot, or deterioration or unintended
transformation as they are purposed and repurposed, sometimes in unintended ways.
Based on my research and reading of the critical data studies literature, I have
generated my own list that can be organised around what I am choosing to call the
Thirteen Ps of big data. As in any such schema, this Thirteen Ps list is reductive, acting
as a discursive framework to organise and present ideas. But it is one way to draw
attention to the sociocultural dimensions of big data that the Vs lists have thus far
failed to acknowledge, and to challenge the taken-for-granted attributes of the big data
phenomenon.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2474112 , accessed 27
August 2014.
Lupton, D. (2015) Chapter 5: A Critical Sociology of Big Data in Digital Sociology.
London: Routledge.
Lyon, D. (2014) Surveillance, Snowden, and Big Data: Capacities, consequences, critique,
Big Data & Society, 1 (2).
http://bds.sagepub.com/content/1/2/2053951714541861 , accessed 13
December 2014.
Madden, M. (2014) Public Perceptions of Privacy and Security in the post-Snowden Era,
Pew Research Internet Project: Pew Research Center.
McCosker, A. & Wilken, R. (2014) Rethinking big data as visual knowledge: the sublime
and the diagrammatic in data visualisation, Visual Studies, 29 (2), 155-64.
Robinson, D., Yu, H., and Rieke, A. (2014) Civil Rights, Big Data, and Our Algorithmic
Future. No place of publication provided: Robinson + Yu.
Ruppert, E. (2013) Rethinking empirical social sciences, Dialogues in Human Geography,
3 (3), 268-73.
Tene, O. & Polonetsky, J. (2013) A theory of creepy: technology, privacy and shifting
social norms, Yale Journal of Law & Technology, 16, 59-134.
Thrift, N. (2014) The sentient city and what it may portend, Big Data & Society, 1 (1).
http://bds.sagepub.com/content/1/1/2053951714532241.full.pdf+html ,
accessed 1 April 2014.
Tinati, R., Halford, S., Carr, L., and Pope, C. (2014) Big data: methodological challenges
and approaches for sociological analysis, Sociology, 48 (4), 663-81.
Uprichard, E. (2013) Big data, little questions?, Discover Society, (1).
http://www.discoversociety.org/focus-big-data-little-questions/ , accessed 28
October 2013.
van Dijck, J. (2014) Datafication, dataism and dataveillance: Big Data between scientific
paradigm and ideology, Surveillance & Society, 12 (2), 197-208.
Vis, F. (2013) A critical reflection on Big Data: considering APIs, researchers and tools as
data makers, First Monday, 18 (10).
http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4878/3755 , accessed
27 October 2013.