Abstract
Recent years have seen persistent tension between proponents of big data analytics, using new forms of digital data to make computational and statistical claims about ‘the social’, and many sociologists sceptical about the value of big data, its associated methods and claims to knowledge. We seek to move beyond this, taking inspiration from a mode of argumentation pursued by Putnam (2000), Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) and Piketty (2014) that we label ‘symphonic social science’. This bears both striking similarities and significant differences to the big data paradigm and – as such – offers the potential to do big data analytics differently. This offers value to those already working with big data – for whom the difficulties of making useful and sustainable claims about the social are increasingly apparent – and to sociologists, offering a mode of practice that might shape big data analytics for the future.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1132-1148 |
Number of pages | 17 |
Journal | Sociology |
Volume | 51 |
Issue number | 6 |
Early online date | 2 Jun 2017 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Dec 2017 |
Research Groups and Themes
- Digital Societies
Keywords
- big data
- computational methods
- sociology
- symphonic social science
- visualisation
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Professor Susan Halford
- School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies - Professor of Sociology
Person: Academic