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SUMMARY:Big Data and Fine Details: The Importance of Qualitative Approache
 s in the Study of Social Media and Political Phenomena - Paolo Gerbaudo\, 
 Digital Humanities\, King's College London
DTSTART:20150305T140000Z
DTEND:20150305T153000Z
UID:TALK56535@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Ella McPherson
DESCRIPTION:Big data is an emerging field of research for scholars in the 
 social sciences and humanities\, that opens great opportunities for captur
 ing the dynamics of complex social phenomena\, from protest movements\, to
  emerging political parties\, in profound ways. Yet\, there are also serio
 us risks involved in this development\, as academics involved in the field
 \, sometimes ignore the inherent bias of datasets\, or do not dedicate suf
 ficient attention to the social context of the data they analyse\, and the
  cultural specificity of certain terms\, hashtags\, and contents conveyed 
 via social media as Facebook and Twitter. This uncritical use of big data 
 analysis has produced some serious scholarly blunders\, at different level
 s\, such as sampling (choosing the wrong hashtag!) and interpretation (fil
 tering datasets in dubious ways). In this talk I will argue for the need t
 o couple qualitative and quantitative methodologies in the study of social
  media and big data to avoid these mistakes being repeated in the future. 
 Big data research calls for the formation of research teams with mixed exp
 ertise to couple the ability to crunch big data\, with the capacity to tak
 e into account the "fine details" which are necessary to understand the se
 mantic aspect of contemporary online communication.
LOCATION:Seminar room\, Sociology Department\, Free School Lane 
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