Housley, William, Procter, Rob, Edwards, Adam, Burnap, Pete, Williams, Matthew, Sloan, Luke, Rana, Omer, Morgan, Jeffrey, Voss, Alex and Greenhill, Anita (2014) Big and broad social data and the sociological imagination : a collaborative response. Big data & society, 1 (2).

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Abstract

In this paper, we reflect on the disciplinary contours of contemporary sociology, and social science more generally, in the age of ‘big and broad’ social data. Our aim is to suggest how sociology and social sciences may respond to the challenges and opportunities presented by this ‘data deluge’ in ways that are innovative yet sensitive to the social and ethical life of data and methods. We begin by reviewing relevant contemporary methodological debates and consider how they relate to the emergence of big and broad social data as a product, reflexive artefact and organizational feature of emerging global digital society. We then explore the challenges and opportunities afforded to social science through the widespread adoption of a new generation of distributed, digital technologies and the gathering momentum of the open data movement, grounding our observations in the work of the Collaborative Online Social Media ObServatory (COSMOS) project. In conclusion, we argue that these challenges and opportunities motivate a renewed interest in the programme for a ‘public sociology’, characterized by the co-production of social scientific knowledge involving a broad range of actors and publics.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
Divisions:	Faculty of Science > Computer Science
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Big data, Online social networks
Journal or Publication Title:	Big data & society
Publisher:	Sage Publications Ltd.
ISSN:	2053-9517
Official Date:	5 August 2014
Dates:	Date Event 5 August 2014 Published
Volume:	1
Number:	2
Number of Pages:	15
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Access rights to Published version:	Open Access
Funder:	Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain) (ESRC), ESRC National Centre for Research Methods, Joint Information Systems Committee
Grant number:	ES/K008013/1 (ESRC), ES/J009903/1 (ESRC)
Embodied As:	1

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