Description
Book SynopsisOffers 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. Part 1 explores how the advent of geoweb technologies and big data sets has influenced some of geography's major subdisciplines. Part 2 addresses how the geographic study of big data has implications for other disciplinary fields.
Trade Review"In recent years, big data has been frequently touted as the new reality in research, business, and nearly everything else. This work examines the promise and realities of big data specifically as it relates to geographically referenced information."—J. Cummings,
Choice“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
Table of ContentsList 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
