Thick Big Data: Doing Digital Social Sciences

The social sciences are becoming datafied.

The questions once considered the domain of sociologists are now answered by data scientists operating on large datasets and breaking with methodological tradition, for better or worse. The traditional social sciences, such as sociology or anthropology, are under the double threat of becoming marginalized or even irrelevant, both from new methods of research which require more computational skills and from increasing competition from the corporate world which gains an additional advantage based on data access.

However, unlike data scientists, sociologists and anthropologists have a long history of doing qualitative research. The more quantified datasets we have, the more difficult it is to interpret them without adding layers of qualitative interpretation. Big Data therefore needs Thick Data. This book presents the available arsenal of new methods and tools for studying society both quantitatively and qualitatively, opening ground for the social sciences to take the lead in analysing digital behaviour. It shows that Big Data can and should be supplemented and interpreted through thick data as well as cultural analysis. Thick Big Data is critically important for students and researchers in the social sciences to understand the possibilities of digital analysis, both in the quantitative and qualitative area, and to successfully build mixed-methods approaches.

Dariusz Jemielniak, Full Professor of Management, Kozminski University

Dariusz Jemielniak is Full Professor of Management at Kozminski University in Poland, where he heads the MINDS (Management in Networked and Digital Societies) department. He is also Associate Faculty at Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and a member of The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. He is the author of Common Knowledge?: An Ethnography of Wikipedia (2014, Stanford University Press), winner of the Dorothy Lee Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Culture in 2015 and the Chair of the Polish Academy of Sciences academia award in 2016. His research focuses on open collaboration, peer production, and sharing economy.