B-DATA Big Data Assemblages: Techniques and Actors

B-DATA aims to examine the emerging and evolving data assemblages producing open data, data infrastructure and big data. Ubiquitous and pervasive technology allows a massive production of New data (Big data, Big corpora, Open data, Linked data, etc.). Furthermore, data infrastructures (archives, informational system, data portals, repositories, etc.) scale traditional data up into larger datasets, making them accessible for reuse to researchers, analysts and the wider public. In this context crucial methodological issues (population definition, samples selection, validity, data structuring, metadata collection, timeliness and real-time data flow, etc.) are shaped into new forms. Moreover, it re-emerge data-driven science opposed to common social science research that usually is theory-laden. In order to bring research on data revolution beyond the current state of art, Dalton e Tatcher (2014) have therefore called for the need of critical data studies, which apply critical social theory to data to explore the ways in which data are never neutral, objective, raw representation of the world but are situated, contingent, relational and contextual. Kitchin (2014) has advocated the importance of understanding data and data revolution by inspecting what he calls data assemblages. Data assemblage is made of two main activities: A= a technical process, (operational definitions, data selection, data curation, etc.) which shape the data as it is; B= a cultural process, which shapes the background knowledge of actors involved in the construction, management and use of data (believes, instruments and others things that are shared within a scientific community). B-DATA aims to inspect data assemblages. Its main objective is to compare and contrast the different practices and governances used in data assemblage, with the intent to establish a set of common rules on aspects of data construction, data preparation, data management and data exploitation The aim of B-DATA is to compare and contrast the different practices and governances used in data assemblage, with the intent to establish a set of common rules on aspects of data construction, data preparation, data management and data exploitation Furthermore, by inspecting data assemblages, B-DATA wants to give answers to a number of research questions: - What are the main New Data and how it is possible to classify them? - What research questions can New Data answer? - What are the main research problems when using New Data? - What are the main techniques to prepare and analyze New Data? - What professionals are employed in the production and use of New data for social research? The research proposal is within the context of Europe. The data assemblage that will be used as case studies are those of three data infrastructures: Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA); Italian Statistical Office (ISTAT); Web Science Institute of the University of Southampton. All the three data infrastructures have already granted their full collaboration. B-DATA will be cross-cutting for its mixed-method approach. Quantitative research as well as qualitative in-depth analysis will be carried out. On the qualitative side, an ethnographic account of the assemblage “in action” will be useful to observe apparatuses from different point of views.On the quantitative side, an analysis of some of the databases constructed by the data infrastructure will be carried out. The expected outcomes of the quantitative analysis are three: - A list of best practises that can be employed in different contexts; - A classification of different kinds of New data; - A quality assessment of the databases used.