Big Data for Qualitative Research covers everything small data
researchers need to know about big data, from the potentials of big data
analytics to its methodological and ethical challenges. The data that we
generate in everyday life is now digitally mediated, stored, and
analyzed by web sites, companies, institutions, and governments. Big
data is large volume, rapidly generated, digitally encoded information
that is often related to other networked data, and can provide valuable
evidence for study of phenomena.
This book explores the potentials of qualitative methods and analysis
for big data, including text mining, sentiment analysis, information and
data visualization, netnography, follow-the-thing methods, mobile
research methods, multimodal analysis, and rhythmanalysis. It debates
new concerns about ethics, privacy, and dataveillance for big data
qualitative researchers.
This book is essential reading for those who do qualitative and mixed
methods research, and are curious, excited, or even skeptical about big
data and what it means for future research. Now is the time for
researchers to understand, debate, and envisage the new possibilities
and challenges of the rapidly developing and dynamic field of big data
from the vantage point of the qualitative researcher.
