Questioning Big Data - datafication, knowledge production and governance
Internet traffic, smart phones, GPS devices, satellites and billions of sensors produce massive amounts of data that can be used to understand, measure and affect human actions in new ways. ‘Big data’ is the widely used term for the rapidly growing amounts and uses of such digital traces, and we currently see a widespread excitement about the potential of Big Data for business, academia, government, health care, urban governance and development efforts.
This seminar will open up current discussions about Big Data by asking questions about its history and foundations, the production and circulation of big data-based forms of knowledge, its potentials in different spheres, and the kinds of political and normative issues that it raises.
Two leading scholars in this area – Jannis Kallinikos (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Evelyn Ruppert (Goldsmiths, University of London) – will help us ignite these discussions and shed light on fundamental questions about the ways in which Big Data produces particular forms of knowledge and governance, how such analyses are actually produced, and what some of the effects and risks of the data deluge may be.
Jannis Kallinikos is a leading expert on digital information, who works at the intersection of the fields of organisation studies and information systems. His recent work includes the books Governing Through Technology: Information Artefacts and Social Practice and Materiality and Organizing: Social Interaction in a Technological World.
Evelyn Ruppert is a data sociologist, who works on the role of numbers, quantifications and statistics in knowledge production and governance. Her work focuses on censuses and the governance of populations, and more recently on Big Data. Also, Evelyn is editor-in-chief of the forthcoming Routledge journal 'Big Data and Society'.
The seminar will be highly interactive and allow for discussions of a wide range of questions about big data.
The seminar is arranged by the Public Private Platform research cluster Internet, Business and Society. For more information, contact Associate Professor Mikkel Flyverbom, mfl.ikl@cbs.dk or 3815 3375.
Sign up via email to publicprivateplatform@cbs.dk, before the 23rd of May
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The seminar also marks the launch of the Big Data Forum website www.big-data-forum.org. The Big Data Forum is part of the Public-Private Platform at Copenhagen Business School and aims to strike up and advance discussions about the possibilities and consequences of the growing focus on big data. The Forum brings together a qualified and engaged group of people from the public sector and private companies and offers a platform for dialogues about the significance of big data in relation to innovation and growth, governance and politics, and education and research. |