Mapping collective public opinion in the Russian blogosphere
The Russian language blogosphere counts about 85 million blogs—an amount far beyond the capacities of any government to control—and is thereby able to function as a mass medium of “public opinion” and also to exercise influence …
Technological innovation and disruption was a big theme of the WEF 2014 in Davos: but where was government?
The World Economic Forum engages business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas …
Edit wars! Measuring and mapping society’s most controversial topics
Although some topics are globally debated, like religion and politics, there are many topics which are controversial only in a single language edition. This reflects the local preferences and importances assigned to topics by different editorial communities …
The physics of social science: using big data for real-time predictive modelling
There are very interesting examples of using big data to make predictions about disease outbreaks, financial moves in the markets, social interactions based on human mobility patterns, election results, etc …
Verification of crowd-sourced information: is this ‘crowd wisdom’ or machine wisdom?
The problem with computer code is that it is invisible, and that it makes it easy to regulate people’s behaviour directly and often without recourse …
Exploring variation in parental concerns about online safety issues
Parents have different and often conflicting views about what’s best for their children. What’s helpful to one group of parents may not actually benefit parents or youth as a whole …
Ethical privacy guidelines for mobile connectivity measurements
Measuring the mobile Internet can expose information about an individual’s location, contact details, and communications metadata …
Five recommendations for maximising the relevance of social science research for public policy-making in the big data era
How can social scientists help policy-makers in this changed environment, ensuring that social science research remains relevant? …
The promises and threats of big data for public policy-making
Widespread use of digital technologies, the Internet and social media means both citizens and governments leave digital traces that can be harvested to generate big data …
