The Data Revolution: Big Data, Open Data, Data Infrastructures & Their Consequences

“Kitchin’s own definition of big data (Kitchin, 2014a, 2014b) is more useful, laying out the distinguishing features of such data which allow new methodologies: The combination of these characteristics of large-scale data sources which are now available provides the potential to conduct political…”

“The irony is that the presence of contexuality in data news content for the two countries’ networks is low, despite the fact that data serves as a basis for further reasoning and accounts for empirical evidence (Kitchin, 2014).”

“Digital trace data provide granular insights into the activities of social actors at speci fi c points in time and allow us to represent phenomena in ways that foreground their speci fi c features, patterns, and dynamics (Kitchin, 2014, Chen et al., 2012, Lazer et al., 2020).”

“It is intimately linked to economic, political, social, and cultural aims, thereby setting the scene for more general trends and concerns with the current socio-technical moment (Kitchin, 2014).”

“In the past two decades, social processes and personal lives have increasingly been accompanied by the computation of large amounts of data, which are stored and analyzed for numerous purposes (Flensburg and Lomborg, 2023; Kitchin, 2014; van Dijck, 2014).”

“Through a constellation of application programming interfaces, Google Maps’ instant geo-visualization (together with its open source alternative Open Street Map) is integrated in almost every application we use today (Goodchild, 2007; Kitchin, 2014).”

“…are also useful to shed a broader light on Grindr ’ s corporate activities and examine the implications they raise in terms of policy, especially in the context of growing anxieties across global markets over the risks that corporate data-fi cation poses for citizens and democracies (Kitchin, 2014).”

“Exhaust data, finally, refer to data which is “inherently produced by a device or system, but are a by-product of the main function rather than the primary output” [11] (p.”

“Kitchin (2014) describes ‘essential characteristics’ that make big data distinct: including that it is exhaustive, fine grained, and linked.”

“…their granular detail means that they are accompanied by additional challenges around coping with increased data volume, uncertainty, and ethical concerns with using data for scienti fi c research that has been generated as a by-product of other activities (González-Bailón, 2013; Kitchin, 2014a).”

“As it turns to technology and quantitative tools, the humanitarian community follows other disciplines and a global trend which fundamentally changes how data is produced, managed, analyzed, stored, and utilized [11].”

“16 When it comes to its application to privacy externalities, recent judgements from the CJEU (2003, 2014a, 2014b, 2018, 2019) advance criteria for determining whether data subjects using certain services should (a) be considered joint controllers and (b) benefit from the household exemption.”

“The collaboration between data collection and the ongoing expansion of computational capacities to connect and match huge data sets is a driver in creating new forms of data fi cation (Kitchin, 2014).”

“At the same time, however, modern science emphasises the importance of transparency and reproducibility of scien - tific research [1]; indeed, open data and open science is arguably one of the biggest gains of the data revolution [2].”

“Despite these differences, smart urban initiatives usually claim a strong (and unjustified) belief in the objectivity and neutrality of the data and information derived from sensors, platforms and data analytics tools, and which constitutes the algorithmic heart of smart urbanism (Kitchin 2014a).”

“Following on from this, the relationship between data and truth hinges on the fact that data are both, a part of truth claims and a producer of truth claims (Kitchin, 2014).”

“Email: benjamin.jacobsen@durham.ac.uk also Kitchin, 2014a; Mayer-Schoenberger and Cukier, 2013).”

“Additionally, in partial contrast to Kitchin ’ s (2014) discussion of the ‘ data revolution, ’ which includes ‘ a new generation of data analytics designed to cope with data abundance as opposed to data scarcity ’ (xv), K-12 education systems in the United States, and likely elsewhere, are…”

“…that numbers are a distinguished language (Blastland and Dilnot 2008, 1) which “offers the possibility to reframe the epistemology of science, social sciences and humanities” (Kitchin 2014, 147) and reshape “how knowledge is produced, business conducted, and governance enacted” (Kitchin 2014, xv).”

“…behavior through its algorithms (Bucher, 2018; Gillespie, 2014; Tufekci, 2017; Vaidhyanathan, 2018), technological ideologies (Chun, 2011, 2016; Kitchin, 2014), social capital arrangements (boyd, 2014; Ellison et al., 2010), labor frameworks (Duffy, 2017; Fuchs, 2013; Stark & Crawford, 2015;…”

“Big data is often defined as a massive increase of three Vs, namely, the volume, variety, and velocity of data (Kitchin 2014:68).”

“Mental health and wellbeing data are behavioural data, which reveal how people make sense of, interpret, and interact with the world (Kitchin 2014; Zuboff 2019).”

“…public policy domains confronting substantial and unprecedented in fl uences of data fi cation (e.g., health or policing), education has become a key target of the ‘ data deluge ’ (Kitchin, 2014), where data infrastructures and practices are increasingly interwoven with various educational contexts.”

“As I pointed out in the introduction, the development of the MarTech ecosystem and the massive investments by companies to compose or rethink their MarTech stack are taking place in a very favourable context of datafication (Beauvisage & Mellet, 2020a; Beer, 2018; Kitchin, 2014).”

“Moreover, AI systems trained on static datasets struggle to adapt to changing socio-cultural contexts [22], as architecture, by its nature, evolves with the needs and aspirations of society.”

“Concrete examples of the adaptation of infrastructure to the urban context include digital dashboards, community maps, online historical archives, localised Q&A forums, event and meeting registration systems, and ‘smart city control and operation centers’ (Kitchin, 2014, p. 99).”

“Yet, there are still great uncertainties about how to do this [16], or whether indeed data turns out to be the 'new oil'.”

“…data traces and APIs as a data source for research, societal predictions and subsequent actions is manifold but especially concerns the use of Facebook data as a “god’s eye view” on usage and users behind the digital traces (Blank, 2017; Blank & Lutz, 2017; Hargittai, 2015; Kitchin, 2014: 167).”

“Open data advocates argue that civic engagement is enhanced by open data because individuals or civil society organizations can make use of open data in critical or innovative ways (Sampson & Kinnear, 2009; Kitchin, 2014).”

“This ‘big data’ is providing a very different perspective on the way we might understand our cities while also revealing how new information technologies are changing the very 340 Visualising Data for Smart Cities behaviour patterns that make up the contemporary city (Kitchin, 2014a).”

“The first issue to note here, of course, is that each of these signifiers for the NEET categorisation is generated through metrics – through particular algorithms that aggregate particular ‘ indexed ’ and ‘ attributable ’ data into powerful and meaningful categories (Kitchin, 2014, p. 115).”

“In this opinion article, we propose that the recent data explosion (Kitchin, 2014), along with new technological conditions of information production (Benkler, 2005) invite a reappraisal of the value and valuation of information in the contemporary era.”

“Nous voici à l’ère de la révolution des données (voir notamment [Borgman 2015 ; Kitchin 2014a ; Hey, Tansley & Tolle 2009]).”

“Örneğin; Facebook gönderilerinde fotoğraf, video, metin, link ve yorumlar içerebilen farklı formatlar aynı anda bulunabilmektedir (Kitchin, 2014).”

“Kitchin (2014b: 25) pursues data assemblages in relation to how data can usher in new regimes of data-driven societal control, tabling a broad array of constituent factors.”

“Open Data is openly available data-sets permitting citizens to freely use, modify, and share them for any purpose [2].”

“It needs to be analysed and combined appropriately in order to turn it into useful information (Witt 2010: 4 f.; Kitchin 2014).”

“Daten sind nicht neutral oder objektiv, sondern existieren immer in Abhängigkeit von den Ideen, Instrumenten, Praktiken, Kontexten und dem Wissen, die sie generieren, verarbeiten und analysieren (Kitchin 2014).”

“dissatisfaction with the idea that big data ‘speak for themselves’ [10, 19].”

“This scholarship evinces how big data co-produces racialized social phenomena and inequalities, extending claims that data and datafication are cultural processes (e.g. Friedman and Nissenbaum, 1996; Gitelman, 2013; Kitchin, 2014).”

“As the collective pool of open access data is increasing, understanding data is becoming both more important and more challenging (Kitchin 2014).”

“The era of Big Data, precipitated by the increasing availability of diverse types of data, has brought about the so-called “data revolution” by which data-led practices have been normalized in various industries, including the game industry (Kitchin, 2014).”

“The world is experiencing a data revolution that dramatically impacts our everyday lives and how we create new knowledge and innovate (Cinnamon, 2020; Gray et al., 2018; Kitchin, 2014).”

“The subjects of critical data studies are the “socio-technical ‘data assemblages’ that make up big data” (Iliadis and Russo, 2016, p. 3; see also Kitchin, 2014 and Kitchin & Lauriault, 2014).”

“However, they are essential data for their systems to run (Kitchin, 2014).”

“Recent decades have seen fast-growing use of social and economic data to transform the way that economics and other social sciences operate (Einav and Levin 2014a, 2014b; Kitchin 2014).”

“Although the purpose remains deliberately undetermined, the slogan also suggests that there must be a purpose to data, somewhat undermining the belief that data are “objective” and “raw,” meaning unprocessed and simply “given” rather than taken (Kitchin 2014).”

“destroyed or relocated if not deemed useful (Kitchin, 2014).”

“…the behaviours, choices, needs, and desires of large samples of individuals collected on extended time frames allows the adoption of a holistic perspective on emerging urban dynamics in a way that can deeply innovate how public policies are constructed (Rabari and Storper 2015; Kitchin 2014a, b).”

“Furthermore, their data were granular, unstructured and messy (Kitchin, 2014).”