Description: This book explores the challenges society faces with big data, through the lens of culture rather than social, political or economic trends, as demonstrated in the words we use, the values that underpin our interactions, and the biases and assumptions that drive us. Focusing on areas such as data and language, data and sensemaking, data and power, data and invisibility, and big data aggregation, it demonstrates that humanities research, focusing on cultural rather than social, political or economic frames of reference for viewing technology, resists mass datafication for a reason, and that those very reasons can be instructive for the critical observation of big data research and innovation.
Brief description: Jennifer Edmond is Associate Professor of Trinity College Dublin and the co-director of the Trinity Center for Digital Humanities, Ireland. Jennifer also serves as President of the Board of Directors of the pan-European research infrastructure for the arts and humanities, DARIAH-EU. Additionally she represents this body on the Open Science Policy Platform (OSPP), which supports the European Commission in developing and promoting Open Science policies. Until 2016, Jennifer coordinated the 6.5m CENDARI FP7 (2012-1026) project and is a partner in the related infrastructure cluster, PARTHENOS. She was also coordinator of the 2017-2018 ICT programme-funded project KPLEX, which investigated bias in big data research from a humanities perspective, and is currently a partner on the CHIST-ERA project PROVIDE-DH, which is investigating progressive visualisation as a support for managing uncertainty in humanities research.
Review Quotes: "By examining the much-hyped phenomenon of 'big data' through a humanist lens, the authors provide a rich account of the possibilities and limits. They focus on the importance of culture and context for understanding how data are imagined, collected, analysed and understood." --Sally Wyatt, Professor of Digital Cultures, Maastricht University, the Netherlands