Per un’epistemologia del digitale: note sull’uso di big data e computazione nella ricerca sociale

IntroductionThis article aims to investigate the potential impact of restricted social data access on digital research practices. The 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal exposed the exploitation of Facebook user data for speculative purposes and led to the end of the so-called “Data Golden Age,” characterized by free access to social media user data. As a result, many social platforms have limited or entirely banned data access. This policy shift, referred to as the “APIcalypse,” has revolutionized digital research methods.MethodsTo address the impact of this policy shift on digital research, a non-probabilistic sample of Italian researchers was surveyed and the responses were analyzed. The survey was designed to explore how constraints on digital data access have altered research practices, whether we are truly in a post-API era with a radical change in data scraping strategies, and what shared and sustainable solutions can be identified for the post-API scenario.ResultsThe findings highlight how limits on social data access have not yet created a “post-Api” scenario as expected, but it is turning research practices upside down, positively and negatively. On the positive side, because researchers are experimenting with innovative forms of scraping. Negatively, because there could be a “mass migration” to the few platforms that freely grant their APIs, with critical consequences for the quality of research.DiscussionThe closure of many social media APIs has not opened up a post-API world, but has worsened the conditions of making research, which is increasingly oriented to “easy-data” environments such as Twitter. This should prompt digital researchers to make a self-reflexive effort to diversify research platforms and especially to act ethically with user data. It would also be important for the scientific world and large platforms to enter into understandings for open and conscious sharing of data in the name of scientific progress.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The spread of Web 2.0 and social media have accelerated the process of “datafication” of society (Van Dijck, 2014 ; Amaturo and Aragona, 2019 ). They have become the information centers of our consumption, habits, and status.…”

Section: Digital Data and Methods For Scrapingmentioning

confidence: 99%

To scrape or not to scrape, this is dilemma. The post-API scenario and implications on digital research

Trezza

2023

“…This type of analysis wants to investigate the reasons of specific behaviors, for or against emergency policies. Certainly an important concept in this sense is that of the social construction of reality (Pellizzoni and Biancheri, 2021), here redefined in terms of digital ethnography (Amaturo and Aragona, 2019) and risk communication, as well as the analysis of social communication to planning social policies (Bamberger, 2016(Bamberger, , 2018Picciotto, 2020).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 policies and the arising of debate on twitter

Gozzo

D’Agata²

2023

This study focuses on the analysis of contacts and communications on Twitter concerning pandemic policies. The goal is both show mobilization processes rising from the web and detect main actors, themes, and contents within the European context. Through a mixed method procedure, we tried to identify the main themes and most relevant communities, the main users, the most relevant topics and languages, and the underlined meanings and differences related to languages (as proxies of areas). Monitoring the communication on 3 main topics (“no-mask”, “covid-19”, “greenpass”), we noticed the weight of the gap between the government's attempts to communicate information motivating measures geared toward managing the crisis and the perceptions of private users. These perceptions spread through the web with such force the more the emotional, ironic, or polemical plane weighs. In this sense, online communication could be considered a tool for understanding the weight of the interaction between the institutional, social, and private dimensions, with effects on the social construction of identities. Digital communication is becoming an element of this process. The paper describes the “reassuring” role played by the digital community in the construction of ontological forms of security resulting from the construction of a shared digital culture. Results show the emergence of digital communities, structured on reference hubs and standing out from the detected phenomenon, prevalence of idioms and even language structures. The relevant role of the emotional (French), ironic (Italian), protest (English) component is confirmed, but also the changing and fluid structure of the debate and the co-presence of many parallel discussion communities.

“…In this perspective, such data activism is supported not only by the trend of open governance but also by scientific research moving toward open science, characterized by processes of accessibility of public scientific knowledge and new forms of democratization of knowledge (Raffaghelli, 2017 ). At the same time, the development of digital technologies has favored further quantification processes to encourage evidence-based science in the formulation and definition of policies or to extend the logic of the market in the governance of society (Amaturo and Aragona, 2019 , p. 72).…”

Section: Open Data Landscape: Perspectives and Contexts Of Applicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of open data in digital society: The analysis of scientific trending topics through a bibliometric approach

Catone

2023

The analysis of contemporary society, characterized by technological, economic, political, social, and cultural changes, has become more challenging due to the development of the internet and information and communication technologies, which provide a vast and increasingly valuable source of information, knowledge, and data. Within this context, so-called open data—that is, data that are made public, especially by public administrations, through an open governance model (transparent and accessible to citizens) are assuming a significant role. This is a topic of growing importance that scientific research is addressing in an attempt to discern the multiplicity of social, educational, legal, technological, statistical, and methodological issues that underlie the creation and use of such data. This article aims to provide insights into understanding scientific trends on the topic of open data through a bibliometric approach. Specifically, a total of 3,110 publications related to the disciplinary fields of the social sciences and humanities published from 2013 to 2022 were collected. The data was then analyzed using network and factorial analysis techniques to detect the conceptual structure to identify the trends of topics and perspectives of research that characterize open data studies.