The danger of big data: Social media as computational social science
By Andre Oboler, Kristopher Welsh, L. Cruz. 2012
81 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Social networking Web sites are amassing vast quantities of data and computational social science is providing tools to process this data. The combination of these two factors has significant implications for individuals and society. With announcements of growing data aggregation by both Google and Facebook, the need for consideration of these issues is becoming urgent. Just as Web 2.0 platforms put publishing in the hands of the masses, without adequate safeguards, computational social science may make surveillance, profiling, and targeting overly accessible. The academic study of computational social science explains the field as an interdisciplinary investigation of the social dynamics of society with the aid of advanced computational systems. Such investigation can operate at the macro level of global attitudes and trends, down to the personal level of an individual’s psychology. This paper uses the lenses of computation social science to consider the uses and dangers that may result from the data aggregation social media companies are perusing. We also consider the role ethics and regulation may play in protecting the public.
Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Communication, Sociology and Political Science
How researchers see this paper
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In Artificial Intelligence
- Carlos Castillo
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- Emre Kıcıman
- Alexandra Olteanu
- Hamed Zamani
- W. Bruce Croft
- Jimmy J. Lin
- Nick Craswell
In Communication
- Alexandra Olteanu
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- Carlos Castillo
- Emre Kıcıman
- Richard Kingston
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In Sociology and Political Science
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- Fernando Diaz
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- Emre Kıcıman
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- Ricardo A. Baeza-Yates
- Muhammad Imran
- Angelina Wang
Citations in the corpus
- Social Data: Biases, Methodological Pitfalls, and Ethical Boundaries (2019, methodology): “In our analysis, we occasionally go beyond social data and into research that could be placed within social computing or computational social science more generally [Mann 2016; Mason et al. 2014; Oboler et al. 2012].”
- Smart Cities and Green Growth: Outsourcing Democratic and Environmental Resilience to the Global Technology Sector (2014, background): “They can be interrogated and aggregated to reveal personal and group behaviours (Oboler et al, 2012).”