Thinking Big Data in Geography: New Regimes, New Research

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.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Toward Critical Data Studies
Chapter 2. Big Data . . . Why (Oh Why?) This Computational Social Science?
Chapter 3. Smaller And Slower Data In An Era Of Big Data
Chapter 4. Reflexivity, Positionality, And Rigor In The Context Of Big Data Research
Chapter 5. A Hybrid Approach To Geotweets
Chapter 6. Geosocial Footprints And Geoprivacy Concerns
Chapter 7. Foursquare In The City Of Fountains
Chapter 8. Big City, Big Data
Chapter 9. Framing Digital Exclusion In Technologically Mediated Urban Spaces
Chapter 10. Bringing The Big Data Of Climate Change Down To Human Scale
Chapter 11. Synergizing Geoweb And Digital Humanitarian Research
Chapter 12. Rethinking The Geoweb And Big Data