Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T00:28:39.643Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Big Data and Democracy: Facts and Values

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2017

Ashley E. Gorham*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania

Abstract

The incongruity between traditional research standards and the realities of “big data” raises novel ethical questions for political science researchers. Data’s status as a commodity largely held by private companies only further confuses matters. Drawing on Max Weber, this article attempts to shift the current ethical discussion away from the individualistic concern for privacy toward the more collective framework of democratic values.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Anderson, Chris. 2008. “The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete.” Wired, June 23. Available at www.wired.com/2008/06/pb-theory.Google Scholar
Barocas, Solon, and Nissenbaum, Helen. 2014. “Big Data’s End Run around Anonymity and Consent.” In Privacy, Big Data, and the Public Good: Frameworks for Engagement, ed. Lane, Julia, Stodden, Victoria, Bender, Stefan, and Nissenbaum, Helen, 4475. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bond, Robert M., Fariss, Christopher J., Jones, Jason J., Kramer, Adam D. I., Marlow, Cameron, Settle, Jaime E., and Fowler, James H.. 2012. “A 61-Million-Person Experiment in Social Influence and Political Mobilization.” Nature 489 (7415): 295–8. DOI: 10.1038/nature11421.Google Scholar
Bond, Robert, and Messing, Solomon. 2015. “Quantifying Social Media’s Political Space: Estimating Ideology from Publicly Revealed Preferences on Facebook.” American Political Science Review 109 (1): 6278. DOI: 10.1017/S0003055414000525.Google Scholar
boyd, danah, and Crawford, Kate. 2012. “Critical Questions for Big Data.” Information, Communication & Society 15 (5): 662679. DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2012.678878.Google Scholar
boyd, danah. 2014. “What Does the Facebook Experiment Teach Us? Growing Anxiety About Data Manipulation.” Medium, July 1. Available at https://medium.com/message/what-does-the-facebook-experiment-teach-us-c858c08e287f.Google Scholar
Clark, William Roberts, and Golder, Matt. 2015. “Big Data, Causal Inference, and Formal Theory: Contradictory Trends in Political Science?: Introduction.” PS: Political Science & Politics 48 (1): 6570. DOI: 10.1017/S1049096514001759.Google Scholar
Crawford, Kate, and Schultz, Jason. 2014. “Big Data and Due Process: Toward a Framework to Redress Predictive Privacy Harms.” Boston College Law Review 55 (1): 93128. Available at http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/bclr/vol55/iss1/4.Google Scholar
Custers, Bart. 2016. “Click Here to Consent Forever: Expiry Dates for Informed Consent.” Big Data & Society 3 (1): 16. DOI: 10.1177/2053951715624935.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, Heather K., Cordova, Victoria, and Sipole, Savannah. 2014. “Twitter Style: An Analysis of How House Candidates Used Twitter in Their 2012 Campaigns.” PS: Political Science & Politics 47 (2): 454–62. DOI: 10.1017/S1049096514000389.Google Scholar
Gartner. 2017. “IT Glossary: Big Data.” Available at www.gartner.com/it-glossary/big-data.Google Scholar
Jamal, Amaney A., Keohane, Robert O., Romney, David, and Tingley, Dustin. 2015. “Anti-Americanism and Anti-Interventionism in Arabic Twitter Discourses.” Perspectives on Politics 13 (1): 5573. DOI: 10.1017/S1537592714003132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kannan, Vibha. 2015. “Penn Researcher Refuses to Analyze Ashley Madison Data.” Daily Pennsylvanian, August 30. Available at www.thedp.com/article/2015/08/penn-researcher-refuses-to-analyze-ashley-madison-data.Google Scholar
Kaufman, Jason. 2008. “Michael—We Did Not Consult…” Michaelzimmer.org. October 2, 9:25 p.m. Blog comment. Available at www.michaelzimmer.org/2008/09/30/on-the-anonymity-of-the-facebook-dataset.Google Scholar
King, Gary, Pan, Jennifer, and Roberts, Margaret E.. 2013. “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression.” American Political Science Review 107 (2): 326–43. DOI: 10.1017/S0003055413000014.Google Scholar
Kitchin, Rob, and McArdle, Gavin. 2016. “What Makes Big Data, Big Data? Exploring the Ontological Characteristics of 26 Datasets.” Big Data & Society 3 (1): 110. DOI: 10.1177/2053951716631130.Google Scholar
Kramer, Adam D. I., Guillory, Jamie E., and Hancock, Jeffrey T.. 2014. “Experimental Evidence of Massive-Scale Emotional Contagion through Social Networks.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111 (24): 8788–90. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1320040111.Google Scholar
Lewis, Kevin, Kaufman, Jason, Gonzalez, Marco, Wimmer, Andreas, and Christakis, Nicholas. 2008. “Tastes, Ties, and Time: A New Social Network Dataset Using Facebook.com.” Social Networks 30 (4): 330–42. DOI: 10.1016/j.socnet.2008.07.002.Google Scholar
Marwick, Alice E., and boyd, danah. 2014. “Networked Privacy: How Teenagers Negotiate Context in Social Media.” New Media & Society 16 (7): 1051–67. DOI: 10.1177/1461444814543995.Google Scholar
Metcalf, Jacob, and Crawford, Kate. 2016. “Where are Human Subjects in Big Data Research? The Emerging Ethics Divide.” Big Data & Society 3 (1): 114. DOI: 10.1177/2053951716650211.Google Scholar
Nissenbaum, Helen. 2004. “Privacy as Contextual Integrity.” Washington Law Review 79: 119–58.Google Scholar
Pariser, Eli. 2011. The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Venter, J. Craig, et al. 2004. “Environmental Genome Shotgun Sequencing of the Sargasso Sea.” Science 304 (5667): 6674. DOI: 10.1126/science.1093857.Google Scholar
Verma, Inder M. 2014. “Editorial Expression of Concern and Correction: Experimental Evidence of Massivescale Emotional Contagion through Social Networks.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111 (29): 10779. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1412469111.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1989. “Science as a Vocation.” In Max Weber’s “Science as a Vocation,” ed. Lassman, Peter and Velody, Irving with Martins, Herminio; translated by John, Michael, 331. Boston: Unwin Hyman.Google Scholar
Whitley, Edgar A., Kanellopoulou, Nadja, and Kaye, Jane. 2012. “Consent and Research Governance in Biobanks: Evidence from Focus Groups with Medical Researchers.” Public Health Genomics 15 (5): 232–42. DOI: 10.1159/000336544.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zimmer, Michael. 2010. “‘But the Data Is Already Public’: On the Ethics of Research in Facebook.” Ethics and Information Technology 12 (4): 313–25. DOI: 10.1007/s10676-010-9227-5.Google Scholar