Big data analysis

‘Big data’ is a current buzzword in the media and communication industries, and in the disciplines that study them, much as ‘Web 2.0’ was in the 1990s. ‘Big data analytics’ is rapidly emerging as a field of research and development, drawing on increasingly rich, increasingly widely available datasets on facets of contemporary life ranging from climate change through economic performance to social media activity. Journalism is caught up in the surge towards ‘big data’ in two ways: as a driver of innovation, through the development of new journalistic specializations currently operating under names such as data journalism or computational journalism; and as an object of analysis, with data on the performance of journalists and news organizations (especially on the public response to their work through social media) being used to justify decisions to increase or decrease staff and funding. This chapter explores the uses of ‘big data’ in the latter sense, as tools in journalism research, and identifies the threats and opportunities inherent in such developments. It highlights major advances in the field, and shows how the tracking of ‘big data’ on the public resonance of journalistic work provides new evidence about the actual role of journalism in the wider public sphere, beyond normative dogma. At the same time, the chapter also highlights the potential threats which emerge from a strongly quantitative, data-driven turn in journalism research: for example, from the pursuit of strong popularity metrics at the expense of journalistic quality