In recent years, the healthcare field welcomed an emerging field of practices captured under the umbrella term ‘Big Data’. This term is surrounded with positive rhetoric and promises about the ability to analyse real-world data quickly and comprehensively. Such rhetoric is highly consequential in shaping debates on Big Data. While the fields of Science and Technology Studies and Critical Data Studies have been instrumental in elaborating the neglected and problematic dimensions of Big Data, it remains an open question how and (...) to what extent such insights become embedded in other fields. In this paper, we analyse the epistemological claims that accompany Big Data in the healthcare domain. We systematically searched scientific literature and selected 206 editorials as these reflect on developments in the domain. Through an interpretive analysis, we construct five ideal-typical discourses that all frame Big Data in specific ways. Three of the discourses frame Big Data in positive terms and disseminate a compelling rhetoric. Metaphors of ‘capturing’, ‘illuminating’ and ‘harnessing’ data presume that Big Data are benign and leading to valid knowledge. The scientist and critical-interpretive discourses question the objectivity and effectivity claims of Big Data. Metaphors of ‘selecting’ and ‘constructing’ data illustrate another political message, framing Big Data as limited. We conclude that work in the critical-interpretive discourse has not broadly infiltrated the medical domain. Ways to better integrate aspects of the discourse in the healthcare domain are urgently needed. (shrink)

Critical Data Studies explore the unique cultural, ethical, and critical challenges posed by Big Data. Rather than treat Big Data as only scientifically empirical and therefore largely neutral phenomena, CDS advocates the view that Big Data should be seen as always-already constituted within wider data assemblages. Assemblages is a concept that helps capture the multitude of ways that already-composed data structures inflect and interact with society, its organization and functioning, and the resulting impact on individuals’ daily lives. CDS questions the (...) many assumptions about Big Data that permeate contemporary literature on information and society by locating instances where Big Data may be naively taken to denote objective and transparent informational entities. In this introduction to the Big Data & Society CDS special theme, we briefly describe CDS work, its orientations, and principles. (shrink)

This paper argues that analyses of the ways in which Big Data has been enacted in other academic disciplines can provide us with concepts that will help understand the application of Big Data to social questions. We use examples drawn from our Science and Technology Studies analyses of -omic biology and high energy physics to demonstrate the utility of three theoretical concepts: primary and secondary inscriptions, crafted and found data, and the locus of legitimate interpretation. These help us to show (...) how the histories, organisational forms, and power dynamics of a field lead to different enactments of big data. The paper suggests that these concepts can be used to help us to understand the ways in which Big Data is being enacted in the domain of the social sciences, and to outline in general terms the ways in which this enactment might be different to that which we have observed in the ‘hard’ sciences. We contend that the locus of legitimate interpretation of Big Data biology and physics is tightly delineated, found within the disciplinary institutions and cultures of these disciplines. We suggest that when using Big Data to make knowledge claims about ‘the social’ the locus of legitimate interpretation is more diffuse, with knowledge claims that are treated as being credible made from other disciplines, or even by those outside academia entirely. (shrink)

The article examines the construction of “Big Data” in media discourse. Rather than asking what Big Data really is or is not, it deals with the discursive work that goes into making Big Data a socially relevant phenomenon and problem in the first place. It starts from the idea that in modern societies the public understanding of technology is largely driven by a media-based discourse, which is a key arena for circulating collectively shared meanings. This largely ignored dimension invites us (...) to appreciate what matters to journalists and the wider public when discussing the collection and use of data. To this end, our study looks at how Big Data is framed in terms of the governmental use of large datasets as a contentious area of data application. It reconstructs the perspectives surrounding the so-called “Handygate” affair in Germany based on broadcast news and social media conversations. In this incident, state authorities collected and analyzed mobile phone data through a radio cell query during events to commemorate the Dresden bombing in February 2011. We employ a qualitative discourse analysis that allows us to reconstruct the conceptualizations of Big Data as a proper instrument for criminal prosecution or an unjustified infringement of constitutional rights. (shrink)