Thinking Big Data in Geography offers a practical state-of-the-field overview of big data as both a means and an object of research, with essays from prominent and emerging scholars such as Rob Kitchin, Renee Sieber, and Mark Graham. Part 1 explores how the advent of geoweb technologies and big data sets has influenced some of geography's major subdisciplines: urban politics and political economy, human-environment interactions, and geographic information sciences. Part 2 addresses how the geographic study of big data has implications for other disciplinary fields, notably the digital humanities and the study of social justice. The volume concludes with theoretical applications of the geoweb and big data as they pertain to society as a whole, examining the ways in which user-generated data come into the world and are complicit in its unfolding. The contributors raise caution regarding the use of spatial big data, citing issues of accuracy, surveillance, and privacy.
Thinking Big Data in Geography offers a practical state-of-the-field overview of big data as both a means and an object of research, with essays from prominent and emerging scholars such as Rob Kitchin, Renee Sieber, and Mark Graham. Part 1 explores how the advent of geoweb technologies and big data sets has influenced some of geography's major subdisciplines: urban politics and political economy, human-environment interactions, and geographic information sciences. Part 2 addresses how the geographic study of big data has implications for other disciplinary fields, notably the digital humanities and the study of social justice. The volume concludes with theoretical applications of the geoweb and big data as they pertain to society as a whole, examining the ways in which user-generated data come into the world and are complicit in its unfolding. The contributors raise caution regarding the use of spatial big data, citing issues of accuracy, surveillance, and privacy.
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Introduction
Jim Thatcher, Andrew Shears, and Josef Eckert
Part 1. What Is Big Data and What Does It Mean to Study It?
1. Toward Critical Data Studies: Charting and Unpacking Data
Assemblages and Their Work
Rob Kitchin and Tracey P. Lauriault
2. Big Data: Why (Oh Why?) This Computational Social
Science?
David O’Sullivan
Part 2. Methods and Praxis in Big Data Research
3. Smaller and Slower Data in an Era of Big Data
Renee Sieber and Matthew Tenney
4. Reflexivity, Positionality, and Rigor in the Context of Big Data
Research
Britta Ricker
Part 3. Empirical Interventions
5. A Hybrid Approach to Geotweets: Reading and Mapping Tweet
Contexts on Marijuana Legalization and Same-Sex Marriage in
Seattle, Washington
Jin-Kyu Jung and Jungyeop Shin
6. Geosocial Footprints and Geoprivacy Concerns
Christopher D. Weidemann, Jennifer N. Swift, and Karen K. Kemp
7. Foursquare in the City of Fountains: Using Kansas City as a Case
Study for Combining Demographic and Social Media Data
Emily Fekete
Part 4. Urban Big Data: Urban-Centric and Uneven
8. Big City, Big Data: Four Vignettes
Jessa Lingel
9. Framing Digital Exclusion in Technologically Mediated Urban
Spaces
Matthew Kelley
Part 5. Talking across Borders
10. Bringing the Big Data of Climate Change Down to Human Scale:
Citizen Sensors and Personalized Visualizations in Climate
Communication
David Retchless
11. Synergizing Geoweb and Digital Humanitarian
Research
Ryan Burns
Part 6. Conclusions
12. Rethinking the Geoweb and Big Data: Future Research
Directions
Mark Graham
Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index
Jim Thatcher is an assistant professor of geography
at the University of Washington Tacoma. Josef
Eckert is an academic advisor for the Master of Library and
Information Science program at the University of Washington.
Andrew Shears is an assistant professor of
geography at Mansfield University.
“The drumbeat of `big data’ is reorganizing everyday life, for
some. This important collection takes the pulse of this hype from
the perspective of the discipline of geography, pursuing questions
that highlight the peculiarities of this location-based,
techno-cultural moment.”—Matthew W. Wilson, associate professor of
geography at the University of Kentucky
“This collection is a key step along the road from hyperbole to
engagement with regard to the significance and impacts of big
spatial data. It offers key insights into big spatial data as both
means and object of researcher, tracing the socio-spatial and
epistemological possibilities and limits of this dynamic
phenomenon.”—Sarah Elwood, professor of geography at the University
of Washington
“Thinking Big Data in Geography delivers vital theoretical and
empirical perspectives on the problems and possibilities of
spatialized data in both extraordinary circumstances and everyday
life.”—Craig Dalton, assistant professor of global studies and
geography at Hofstra University
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