Dr Alison Powell

This course is compulsory on the MSc in Media and Communications (Data and Society). This course is available on the MPhil/PhD in Data, Networks and Society and MPhil/PhD in Media and Communications. This course is not available as an outside option to students on other programmes.

This course investigates the significance of data in communications, social and cultural life. It introduces core theoretical perspectives on data and information from a social scientific perspective, and outlines research approaches that take account of the contemporary influence of data within communication and society. The course begins with the social history of data, providing a strong baseline from which to analyse the contemporary position of data. The course will provide students with conceptual tools that will help unpack the logic of data, and train them to critically analyse phenomena such as big data, algorithmic regulation and augmented civic space. Its focus on contemporary issues allows an investigation of the politics and culture of data production, and the use of data as evidence in a range of fields including politics, advocacy and audience research.

Some of the questions addressed through the course include: Who owns data? Who makes data? Who makes sense of data? Is data public or private? How do different actors get access to data? How is data protected and regulated? What ethical and governance questions pertain to the study of data as a socio-technical assemblage? These and other questions reflect the course’s focus on developing a critical account of how data is implicated in the structures that shape social life.

10 hours of seminars and 10 hours of lectures in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.

Students will be expected to produce a presentation (group project, student-led session) in the AT, along with written formative coursework. There are two options for written formative coursework on this course. Students can choose to submit either a 1000 word essay; or a 1000 word proposal for case analysis and recommendation

• Beer, D., & Burrows, R. (2013). Popular culture, digital archives and the new social life of data. Theory, Culture & Society 30(4), 47-71.
• Boyd, D., & Crawford, K. (2012). Critical questions for Big Data: Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon. Information, Communication & Society 15(5), 662-679.
• Cheney-Lippold, J. (2011). A new algorithmic identity: Soft biopolitics and the modulation of control. Theory, Culture & Society 28(6), 164-181.
• Gitelman, L., ed. (2013). ‘Raw Data’ is an Oxymoron. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Kitchin, R. (2014). The Data Revolution: Big Data, Open Data, Data Infrastructures and their Consequences. London: Sage.
• Lyon, D. (2014). Surveillance, Snowden, and Big Data: Capacities, consequences, critique. Big Data & Society 1(2), 1-13.
• Mahrt, M., & Scharkow, M. (2013). The value of big data in digital media research. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 57(1), 20-33.
• Russell Neuman, W., Guggenheim, L., Mo Jang, S., & Bae, S. Y. (2014). The dynamics of public attention: Agenda-setting theory meets Big Data. Journal of Communication 64(2), 193-214.
• Tufekci, Z. (2014). Engineering the public: Big Data, surveillance and computational politics. First Monday 19(7). http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4901/4097
• Vaidhyanathan, S. (2006). Afterword: Critical Information Studies: A Bibliographic Manifesto. Cultural Studies 20(2-3): 292-315.

Presentation (50%, 2000 words).

Essay (50%, 2500 words).

Oral Presentation (50%, 10 minutes plus 2000 words background notes). A group presentation on a topic agreed with the course convenor.

Written Essay, report or conceptual case study (50%, 2500 words).

The essay, case study or report will be on a topic agreed with the course convenor based on questions circulated during the course.