Compromised Data

Ganaele Langlois is Assistant Professor at York University, Canada, and Associate Director of the Infoscape Centre for the Study of Social Media, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada. Her research focuses on new media theory, software studies and technoculture. Joanna Redden is Assistant Professor of Critical Media Studies at the University of Calgary, Canada. Her work investigates how digital technologies influence political, media, and protest practices specifically as related to poverty, inequality, and governance.Greg Elmer is Bell Globemedia Research Chair and Director of the Infoscape Centre for the Study of Social Media at Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada. His research and teaching focus on new media and politics, theories and methods in social media studies, surveillance theory, and media globalization.

• Notes on ContributorsIntroduction Ganaele Langlois, York University; Joanna Redden, University of Calgary and Greg Elmer, Toronto Metropolitan University, CanadaPart 1: Data, Power and PoliticsBig Data as System of Knowledge: Investigating Canadian GovernanceJoanna Redden, University of Calgary, CanadaData Mining Research and the Disintegration of Society: the “Project X” Haren RiotsIngrid M. Hoofd, National University of Singapore, SingaporeLook at the Man Behind the Curtain: Computational Management in “Spontaneous” Citizen Political CampaigningDavid Karpf, George Washington University, USAPart 2: Data Limit(ed)Easy Data, Hard Data: The politics and pragmatics of Twitter research after the computational turnJean Burgess and Axel Bruns, Queensland University of Technology, Australia Scraping the First PersonGreg Elmer, Toronto Metropolitan University, CanadaOpen Data and its Enemies? Digital Methods and Compromised DataFenwick McKelvey, Concordia University, CanadaCritical Reverse Engineering: The Case of Twitter and TalkOpenRobert Gehl, University of Utah, USAPart 3. Alt-DataMapping Movements - Social Movement Research and Big Data: Critiques and AlternativesSky Croeser and Tim Highfield, Curtin University, AustraliaData Activism Alessandra Renzi, Northeastern University, USA, and Ganaele Langlois, York University, CanadaA Contribution to the Political Economy of Personal ArchivesYuk Hui, Leuphana University, GermanyThe Haunted Life of Data Lisa Blackman, Goldsmiths University, UKIndex

Big data promise a more efficient understanding of citizen needs, wants, and desires and cast a wide net of harnessing these tendencies in the hope of bringing about more direct forms of democracy. At the same time, however, they do so at the cost of compromising personal data, in effect sacrificing the personal for the political. Compromised Data features contributions from leading scholars who examine the immediacy and complexity of data, big or small, and is a must read for all interested in these issues.