Abstract
Big Data1is a phenomenon that has been increasingly studied in the academy in recent years, especially in technological and scientific contexts. However, it is still a relatively new field of academic study; because it has been previously considered in mainly technological contexts, more attention needs to be drawn to the contributions made in Big Data scholarship in the social sciences by scholars like Omar Tene and Jules Polonetsky, Bart Custers, Kate Crawford, Nick Couldry, and Jose van Dijk. The purpose of this Major Research Paper is to gain insight into the issues surrounding privacy and user rights, roles, and commodification in relation to Big Data in a social sciences context. The term “Big Data” describes the collection, aggregation, and analysis of large data sets. While corporations are usually responsible for the analysis and dissemination of the data, most of this data is user generated, and there must be considerations regarding the user’s rights and roles. In this paper, I raise three main issues that shape the discussion: how users can be more active agents in data ownership, how consent measures can be made to actively reflect user interests instead of focusing on benefitting corporations, and how user agency can be preserved. Through an analysis of social sciences scholarly literature on Big Data, privacy, and user commodification, I wish to determine how these concepts are being discussed, where there have been advancements in privacy regulation and the prevention of user commodification, and where there is a need to improve these measures. In doing this, I hope to discover a way to better facilitate the relationship between data collectors and analysts, and user-generators. 1 While there is no definitive resolution as to whether or not to capitalize the term “Big Data”, in capitalizing it I chose to conform with such authors as boyd and Crawford (2012), Couldry and Turow (2014), and Dalton and Thatcher (2015), who do so in the scholarly literature.
Highlights
While the analysis of Big Data sets can prove valuable in completing and enhancing research, it can expose a number of ethical issues regarding user agency, including who owns the data and how to analyze it, as well as how much control users have in the data collection and analysis process
I wished to determine what the scholarly literature said about Big Data and user commodification and how users can develop a more agentic role in the data appropriation process, how consent measures can better protect user privacy, and how user individuality can be preserved in a process that seeks to predict general patterns through the analysis of aggregate data
In answering RQ 1, which asks how users can play a more active role in data ownership when it comes to data appropriation, increasing transparency measures was a common theme in the scholarly literature
Summary
Technology is constantly evolving, changing the way that we observe the world and make assumptions about things on a daily basis. Technological innovation has had a major impact on data collection and analysis, and with data sets that are bigger and cover a broader scope of information than ever before, a new way of analyzing and interpreting data is needed. This new way of interpreting data comes in the form of the concept of Big Data analysis. The purpose of analyzing Big Data sets is to draw generalizations about populations and make predictions about future behaviours based on the patterns uncovered This means that this process is structured to be inherently commodifying, as it seems largely to benefit corporations who have a vested interest in using this data to target marketing materials to consumers. It makes it easier to perpetuate stereotyping, as individuals are viewed en masse as an algorithm of aggregate behaviours and patterns
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