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Big Data and the Paradox of Diversity

  • Bernhard Rieder
Published/Copyright: December 24, 2016
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Digital Culture & Society
From the journal Digital Culture & Society Volume 2 Issue 2

Abstract

This paper develops a critique of Big Data and associated analytical techniques by focusing not on errors - skewed or imperfect datasets, false positives, underrepresentation, and so forth - but on data mining that works. After a quick framing of these practices as interested readings of reality, I address the question of how data analytics and, in particular, machine learning reveal and operate on the structured and unequal character of contemporary societies, installing “economic morality” (Allen 2012) as the central guiding principle. Rather than critiquing the methods behind Big Data, I inquire into the way these methods make the many differences in decentred, non-traditional societies knowable and, as a consequence, ready for profitable distinction and decision-making. The objective, in short, is to add to our understanding of the “profound ideological role at the intersection of sociality, research, and commerce” (van Dijck 2014: 201) the collection and analysis of large quantities of multifarious data have come to play. Such an understanding needs to embed Big Data in a larger, more fundamental critique of the societal context it operates in.

Keywords: Big data; analytical techniques; digital methods; data analysis; data mining
Published Online: 2016-12-24
Published in Print: 2016-12-1

© 2016 by transcript Verlag

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Titelei
  2. Content
  3. Introduction. Politics of Big Data
  4. I. Critiquing Big Data
  5. What Counts? Reflections on the Multivalence of Social Media Data
  6. Big Data and the Paradox of Diversity
  7. II. Digital Epistemologies
  8. The Alternative Epistemologies of Data Activism
  9. Simondon on Datafication. A Techno-Cultural Method
  10. III. Digital Methodologies
  11. From Data Analytics to Data Hermeneutics. Online Political Discussions, Digital Methods and the Continuing Relevance of Interpretive Approaches
  12. Visual Social Media and Big Data. Interpreting Instagram Images Posted on Twitter
  13. IV. Entering the Field
  14. Group Privacy in Times of Big Data. A Literature Review
  15. Biographical Notes
https://doi.org/10.14361/dcs-2016-0204
Keywords for this article
Big data; analytical techniques; digital methods; data analysis; data mining

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Titelei
  2. Content
  3. Introduction. Politics of Big Data
  4. I. Critiquing Big Data
  5. What Counts? Reflections on the Multivalence of Social Media Data
  6. Big Data and the Paradox of Diversity
  7. II. Digital Epistemologies
  8. The Alternative Epistemologies of Data Activism
  9. Simondon on Datafication. A Techno-Cultural Method
  10. III. Digital Methodologies
  11. From Data Analytics to Data Hermeneutics. Online Political Discussions, Digital Methods and the Continuing Relevance of Interpretive Approaches
  12. Visual Social Media and Big Data. Interpreting Instagram Images Posted on Twitter
  13. IV. Entering the Field
  14. Group Privacy in Times of Big Data. A Literature Review
  15. Biographical Notes
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