Big and broad social data and the sociological imagination: A collaborative response

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.

Spatial Characteristics of Twitter Users—Toward the Understanding of Geosocial Media Production

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Doing digital team ethnography: being there together and digital social data

“…Digital data includes platforms, applications and devices as a resource for social inquiry (Housley et al, 2014). In particular, three core elements of ethnography are reviewed: the construction of the ethnographic object, fieldwork, and fieldnotes.…”

Membership categorisation and antagonistic Twitter formulations

“…However, Twitter has also been used to promote misinformation and antagonistic content (Webb et al, 2015). At the same time, Twitter has been a popular platform through which social scientists have been able to engage with big and broad social data due to its accessibility and open access application programming interface (API) that has enabled researchers to capture data and interrogate massive data sets with a range of digital tools, analytical techniques and interpretive procedures (Housley et al, 2014). However, to date little work has been carried out on the social organisational characteristics of Twitter interaction (Giles et al, 2015).…”

“…Twitter has been described as a new digital agora wherein debate and the exchange of views can facilitate the public and civil sphere in ways that promote democratic engagement and communicative rationality (Edwards et al, 2013;Housley et al, 2014). However, Twitter has also been used to promote misinformation and antagonistic content (Webb et al, 2015).…”