Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This article asks if it is possible to use commercial data analysis software and digital by-product data to do critical social science. In response this article introduces social media data aggregator software to a social science audience. The article explores how this particular software can be used to do social research. It uses some specific examples in order to elaborate upon the potential of the software and the type of insights it can be used to generate. The aim of the article is to show how digital by-product data can be used to see the social in alternative ways, it explores how this commercial software might enable us to find patterns amongst ‘monumentally detailed data’. As such is responds to Andrew Abbott's as yet unresolved eleven year old reflections on the crucial challenges that face the social sciences in a data rich era.

Keywords

The Future of the Social Sciences By-Product Data Digital Data Social Media Data Aggregators

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abbott

(2000) ‘Reflections on the Future of Sociology’, Contemporary Sociology, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 296–300. [doi:10.2307/2654383]

Adkins

and Lury

(2009) ‘What is the Empirical?’, European Journal of Social Theory, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 5–20. [doi:10.1177/1368431008099641]

Adkins

and Lury

(eds) (2011) Measure and Value, Sociological Review Monograph, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford.

Beer

(2009) ‘Power through the algorithm? Participatory web cultures and the technological unconscious’, New Media & Society, vol. 11, no. 6, pp. 985–1002. [doi:10.1177/1461444809336551]

Beer

& Burrows

(2007) ‘Sociology and, of and in Web 2. 0: some initial considerations’, Sociological Research Online, vol. 12, no. 5, ≫http://www.socresonline.org.uk/12/5/17.html≪. [doi:10.5153/sro.1560]

Bauman

(2007) Consuming Life, Cambridge, Polity.

Bennett

, Savage

, Silva

, Warde

, Gayo-Cal

& Wright

(2009) Culture, Class, Distinction, London, Routledge.

Bottero

& Crossley

(2011) ‘Worlds, Fields and Networks: Becker, Bourdieu and the structures of social relations’, Cultural Sociology, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 99–119. [doi:10.1177/1749975510389726]

Burrows

and Gane

(2006) ‘Geodemographics, Software and Class’, Sociology, vol. 40, no. 5, pp. 793–812. [doi:10.1177/0038038506067507]

10.

Featherstone

(2006) ‘Archive’, Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 23, no. 2-3, pp. 591–596. [doi:10.1177/0263276406023002106]

11.

Graham

(2005) ‘Software-sorted geographies’, Progress in Human Geography, vol. 29, no. 5, pp. 1–19. [doi:10.1191/0309132505ph568oa]

12.

Hayles

K. D.

(1999) How we became posthuman: Virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature and informatics, Chicago University Press, Chicago.

13.

Kitchin

and Dodge

(2011) Code/Space: Software and everyday life, MIT press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

14.

Lash

(2007) ‘Power after Hegemony: Cultural Studies in Mutation’, Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 55–78. [doi:10.1177/0263276407075956]

15.

Law

(2004) After Method: mess in social science research, Routledge, London.

16.

Law

(2009) ‘Seeing like a survey’, Cultural Sociology, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 239–256. [doi:10.1177/1749975509105533]

17.

Osborne

, Rose

and Savage

(2008) ‘Reinscribing British sociology: some critical reflections’, The Sociological Review, vol. 56, no. 4, pp. 519–534. [doi:10.1111/j.1467-954X.2008.00803.x]

18.

Ritzer

& Jurgenson

(2010) ‘Production, consumption, presumption: The nature of capitalism in the age of the digital ‘prosumer’, Journal of Consumer Culture, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 13–36. [doi:10.1177/1469540509354673]

19.

Savage

(2010) Identities and Social Change in Britain since 1940: The Politics of Method, Oxford University Press, Oxford. [doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199587650.001.0001]

20.

Savage

and Burrows

(2007) ‘The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology’, Sociology, vol. 41, no. 6, pp. 885–899. [doi:10.1177/0038038507080443]

21.

Thornton

(1995) Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital, Polity, Cambridge.

22.

Webber

(2009) ‘Response to ‘The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology’: An Outline of the Research Potential of administrative and transactional data’, Sociology, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 169–178. [doi:10.1177/0038038508099104]