Week4 COMS2200DIGH2700 BigDataandSociety BigDataandYou 27092023

COMS2200/DIGH2700 Big Data & Society
Week 4 – Sept. 27
Big Data and You
Class: Wednesdays 18:00-2100 RB2200

Student Hours: Wednesdays 15:00-17:00 4110B RB
Tracey P. Lauriault, Associate Professor, Critical Media and Big Data,
Tracey.Lauriault@Carleton.ca
Tracey P. Lauriault - COMS2200 / DIGH2700 Big Data & Society - Fall 2023 1
Schedule
Wk1: Measure & Count Wk2: What are data? Wk3: Small Data & LAC Wk4: Big Data
Wk5: Infrastructure Wk6: Institutions Wk7: Spatial Data Wk8: Data Walk
Wk9: Data Brokers Wk10: Watching Wk11: AI/ML & Robots Wk12: Activism Wk13: Assembling
Elephant in the room!
Assignment 2:
Data in the News - Week 5 – Oct. 4, noon, 10%
Select any news article where data is central to the telling of the story and
critically review it.
It can be about any topic, such as elections & polls, science, environment,
engineering, sports, etc. it must however include data and statistics as a key
element.
Some recommended news sources:
• New York Times UpShot, New York Times Magazine, the UK Guardian Data Blog, the Toronto
Star, The CBC, BBC, The Economist, Wired, NPR, Science, Nature etc.
In 2 pages critically review this article and discuss how data were used to support
the story. Be sure to introduce the story, the data used and their source, and how
they were used. Could you access the data related to the article? What value did
the data add to the story? Would the story have been as convincing without data?
Here are two very useful (similar) resources that provide tips on how to critically
read news resources:
• Rutgers' University Evaluating News Resources
• Carleton University Evaluating sources: Use the CRAAP test
Data Souk!
10 100
September 27, 1998, Google Inc.

Gmail - April 1, 2004
Google Acquires - Keyhole in 2004
Google Maps - Feb 8, 2005
AI and Labour
AI Now - Compute
Accessibility
Tracey P. Lauriault - PAPM4000D Capstone - Fall 2023 9

Sustainability

Sustainability

Indigenous Data Governance

Evaluation
9 out of 11 in-class activities will be graded!

Lose a 1.5 marks every other day that it is late, w/ a 2 day
grace period after the due date.
Week 4 – Sept. 27
Big Data & You
Reading:
Lupton, D. 2017, ‘Know Thyself’ Self-Tracking Technologies and
Practices, Chapter 1 in The Quantified Self, Polity.
Resources:
CIHI. What Is an Indicator? n.d.
MASSTech. 2015. The Massachusetts Big Data Indicators 2015. 2015.
4th in-class activity:

Personal sensing devices, what they measure and their social
shaping qualities
Assignment 2: Data in the news is due next week!
Week 3 Small Data & You
Week 2 Lecture
Memory in records
Records
Records, Memory and Membership
• A person’s story through official records

• Official personal records are often the raw data that
indicate membership, appartenance to a family,
church/mosque/synagogue/gurdwara/temple, band council,
institutions, to a state…
• Records can attest:
• to the ownership of property
• accreditation – a university degree
• Licencing – medical, drivers, pilot etc.
• Where and to whom do you belong?
• A census is a national record of the population
Grampy O’Shea
Lifelogging
(Lupton, 2017)
• Lifelogging
• Personal informatics
• Personal analytics
• Quantified self
• “ethos and apparatus of
practices”
• Related to personal digital data
collection practices of mobile
and wearable devices
• ‘self knowledge through #s’
The Story of Fatima
Reclaiming Erased Lives
(Halilovich 2014)
• Methodology • contemporary technologies
• conventional and digital ethnography
• 3 dominant research areas relating to: • biomedical technology and
• the issues of destruction, use and abuse • information and
of archives and records in post-war
Bosnia, communication technology
• and discuss their legal, political and
ethical dimensions
• impact the reconstruction of
• 2 ethnographies describing: individual and collective
• How survivors of ‘ethnic cleansing’ and identities in shattered
genocide in Bosnia and in the Bosnian
refugee diaspora perceive, experience and Bosnian families and
deal with missing personal records and
material evidence of their histories,
communities in the aftermath
• as well as how they (re)create their own of genocide
archives and memories, and in the process
reassert their ‘erased’ identities in both
real and cyber space.
Reclaiming Erased Lives
(Halilovich 2014)
• 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina

• Ethnic cleansing – 100 000+ lives lost, mostly
men and boys
• Human rights violations and abuse
• Displacement – 2.5 million people
• Destruction – 800 000 homes
• Annihilation of material culture – sacred
buildings monuments, bridges, libraries,
archives, government offices, Registry Office
• Systematic campaign to erase evidence that a
certain group of people existed
• Some highly classified records about war crimes
were found but these were sealed by the Serbian
Government and could only be used to try Slobodan
Milosevic, deal made with the International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
Memoricide
(Halilovich 2014)
• Burning of Bosnia’s National Library “completely

• Destruction of the Oriental Institute obliterate the
• Shelling of Museums and Archives most important
• +/- 90% of archival material was destroyed
collections of
Bosnia’s
• Found one Journal of General Mladic Wartime
cultural
Diary w/3500 pages and 18 notebooks memory, as well
• But also, ethnicization of current archival as the
institutions making it difficult to access consequences of
records these actions,
• Oral testimony vs records vs forensic or ‘memoricide’
as Lovrenovic´
evidence Tracey P. Lauriault - COMS2200 / DIGH2700 Big Data & Society - Fall 2023 34
Memoricide
(Halilovich 2014)
It was “a diligently planned and executed military campaign aimed at

erasing any evidence that those who were ethnically cleansed once existed”
“the perpetrators paid close attention to hiding and destroying the

evidence about the crimes they committed”
“It was not only the loss of life and destruction of infrastructure by
war’s end, but also the obliteration of culture and the disappearance of
official records that created massive obstacles for intending returnees”
“records at a local level were largely irretrievable, at a higher level,

the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
managed to obtain access to highly classified records about the war crimes
and how the whole chain of command of the Serbian army operated during the
war in Bosnia”
The Story of Fatima
(Halilovich 2014)
• Emigrated to St. Louis in the • To emigrate to the US, she had to

US with her youngest son and collect:
daughter • Birth certificates
• Marriage certificates
• 2 photos on her mantle that • Employment history
include her husband and 2 sons • Missing persons written
• She left her burning home in confirmation
• Evidence of property ownership
Bosnia with her children’s • Written confirmation of
school certificates, family’s displacement
healthcare booklets • She had to travel all over to
• She became an internally find papers and to get signed
displaced person, moving to declarations
refugee camps • Incurred travel expenses and fees
• She had to remarry her
Tracey P. Lauriault - COMS2200 /
disappeared husband
DIGH2700 Big Data & Society - Fall 2023 36
Dead Men’s Identities
(Halilovich 2014)
• Sarajevo-based Research • DNA extracted from blood samples

and compared with DNA of remains
and Documentation Centre in mass graves
• International Commission • Dental records, medical
for Missing Persons histories and ante-mortem data
• Once remains are identified and
• BiH Missing Person’s found proper burial is done
Institute • ‘Data of kinship’
• Gendercide • Eventually she found the remains
of her two sons and her husband
• But the artefacts were never
returned – stolen memories
destroyed by ICTY
New archives
The effects of documents
(Halilovich 2014)
• These are the records of ordinary people

• Some of these records are the only things that tie
people to their homes and their loved ones
• Fatima is a living and breathing archive of her
killed relatives, friends and her community
(Halilovich 2014)
“The ethnographies described point to the novel

contribution that these technologies have made to
re-humanising both those who perished and the
survivors of the war in Bosnia”.
Imagined Communities
Anderson, 1991
Imagined Communities
• About how colonies became imagined by their
colonizers and by those colonized
• Uses the term grammar to discuss the discursive
regime of colonial ideologies and policies related to
the construction of the nation, or to components of
its assemblage
• The map, census and museum – the archive - are part
of that grammar, and how these mechanized the
functioning of the nation state
• Uses the term Topography to mean the highs and lows
or peaks and valleys of power
Census, Map, Museum
Anderson 1991
% of books per province

# of books per person per province
Location of museums & galleries
“Few things bring this grammar into more visible relief than three
institutions of power, which, although invented before the mid 19 th
century, changed their form and functions as the colonized zones
entered the age of mechanical reproduction. The three institutions
were the census, the map, and the museum: together, they profoundly
shaped the way in which the colonial state imagined its dominion –
the nature of the human beings it ruled, the geography of its domain,
and the legitimacy of its ancestry” p.164
Census, Map & Archives – Canada 1871
The Colonial Census
Anderson 1991
• Hirschman Study British

Classification Systems (1986)
• Identity Categories are
continuously agglomerated,
disaggregated, recombined,
intermixed and reordered
w/powerful identity
categories lead the list
1. Census classes became more
visibly and exclusively
racial
2. These classes mostly
remained after independence
Mode of imagining the colonial
state
• Those who categorize get to create the class
• Often imported from home or borrowed from others
• Sometimes the same place is categorized by two colonizers
differently and mostly according to their own colonial
borders and imaginaries
• The people categorized often do not see themselves under
those labels
• But over time these categories make up kinds of people &
persist (Hacking 2006)
• Colonial categories clash with local categories
• Such as ethnolinguistic categories, tribes, etc.
Other?
US Racial
Classification,
US 2010 Community
Statistical • Hispanic Origin. A person is of Spanish/Hispanic/Latino origin if the
Directive 15
person’s origin (ancestry) is Mexican, Mexican American, Chicano,
1.American Puerto Rican, Cuban, Argentinean, Colombian, Costa Rican, Dominican,
Indian or Ecuadoran, Guatemalan, Honduran, Nicaraguan, Peruvian, Salvadoran, from
other Spanish-speaking countries of the Caribbean or Central or South
Alaska
The census
Native has to be unambiguous & complete – what
America, or from Spain. People who identify their origin as Spanish,
Hispanic, or Latino may be of any race. Like the concept of race,
of 2.Asian
racialorgroup called Other?
Hispanic origin is based on self identification.
• Race. According to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and as
Pacific
“The fiction
Islander
of the census is that everyone is in
used by the Census Bureau, the concept of race reflects self-
identification by people according to the race or races with which they
it, and that everyone has one – and only one –
3.Black
most closely identify. These categories are socio-political constructs
and should not be interpreted as scientific or anthropological in
nature. The minimum race categories are determined by OMB and required
extremely clear place. No Fractions.”
4.White for use in all federal information collections.
• White,
Hispanic? • Black, Anderson p.166
• American Indian and Alaska Native,
Multiracial? • Asian, and
• Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander
2016
The Colonial
Anderson 1991
Census
• William Henry Scott • Mason Hoadley (MS Thesis)
• Philippines • Ceribon Port of Java
• Reconstruct class structure • The Dutch decided that a
pre-Hispanic historical
Philippines Ceribonese Nobleman (Class)
• Colonized by Spain in 16 th was of a Chinese (race)
Century • Clash of classes
• Spanish Classification • Dutch
System – Census Imaginings • Chenizens and Spanish Hildagos
• Carried out by conquistadors
& clerics • Ethicizing religion
• Principales • Islamic = Malay
• Hildalgos (the noblemen • Religion made up by shrines &
however did not know of each temples & churches
other!)
• Ethnic Christianization
• Pecheros
• Esclavos
Innovation
Anderson 1991
of census takers 1870s
• 1870 Colonial Census Takers
• Greatest innovation was systematic quantification via enumeration
• The census becomes scientific
• Sophisticated administrative means to count
• Tax-rolls & levy lists
• Massive administration
• Armable ‘manpower’
• Women and children were eventually counted!
• Individuals became a datum with attributes, the population is
datafied, they became data and categorized into groups to
become aggregates!
• These became firm as institutions rooted themselves in the
colonial state
Biopower
Foucault 1975-76
• A census is a form of biopower

• The state cannot manage individuals, but it can
manage populations and territories
• The census is a way to exert biopower and through
the institution and infrastructure of the census to
survey and surveil the bodies of the people as an
aggregate
• Taking a census is a biopolitical act to streamline
governing
• It is the power of the state
Locating the class – demographic
topography
Anderson 1991
“Guided by its imagined “The flow of subject

map it organized the new populations through the
educational, juridical, mesh of differential
public health, police, and schools, courts, clinics,
immigration bureaucracies police stations and
it was building on the immigration offices
created ‘traffic-habits’
principle of ethno-racial
which in time gave real
hierarchies which were, social life to the
however, always understood state’s earliest
in parallel series”. fantasies” p. 169
Who are we? Week 3 In-Class activity Spreadsheet
• N=51 of 165
• 9/51 people do not speak English or French well enough to conduct a
conversation. 42/51 do.
• Of those who do speak English or French well enough to conduct a
conversation, 23/42 speak English at home, while 17/42 speak more than one
language at home with one of those languages also being English and only 4/17
speak English/French at home.
• The other languages spoken at home, beyond official languages, are Bengali,
Chinese (Cantonese, Mandarin) Gujarati, Haitian creole, Korean, Romanian,
Somali, Spanish and Urdu
• Of the people who speak both official languages (42) only 1 indicated that
the language they first learned at home in childhood and still understand is
French, 1 indicated French & English,
• and of those who speak 2 languages at home for which one was English, 6 reported that
the first language they learned was English and not the 2nd language they reported,
• And new languages appeared, Tagalog, Yoruba,
Back to the Canadian
Census
Cancellation of the Long-Form Census
Summer of Census-lessness
Census 2011 Forms
62
Tracey P. Lauriault - COMS2200 / DIGH2700 Big Data & Society - Fall 2023
Results
63
The Census Act
• Politically independent statistics
• Arguments • US Bureaucratic interference by Dept.
of Commerce causing undercount in some
• Privacy cities, congressional encroachment
• Office of the privacy • GB Thatcher and questions about unpaid
work, considered invasive and
commissioner only had 3 intrusive, but later much lobby on an
complaints logged independent census, some lobbying to
cancel it
• Stoddard stated there • Scandinavian Countries count through
were 50 in 20 years administrative
• Canada Mulroney tried to cancel it in
• Chief Statistician the 80s, could not because of the
Statistics Act, Provincial support,
• Dr Munir Sheikh resigns Westminster system, Federalism
Long-Form Census & Politics
Census is reinstated
Bill C36 on the amendment of the
Statistics Act
B & B Commission, 10%+ of the population by
CD
Language Islands
of Canada
The making of a people & places
• Bilingual people were created
• The census and the map are national instruments in
combination with legislation produce kinds of
peoples in different places
• Biopolitics (Foucault)
• The archives is where historical censuses are kept!
Week 4 Big Data & You
The Quantified Self
(Lupton, 2017)
• Metrology gone personal & big!

• measuring, recording, monitoring behaviour and/or bodily
functions, sentiment!
• Behaviour metrics, Body metrics, emotional metrics
• “monitoring, measuring and recording elements of
one’s body and life as a form of self-improvement or
self-reflection” (Lupton, Intro).
• Knowingly and purposefully collecting information
about themselves & movement in space, often online,
with sensors.
• 1997 1st conference on wearable computers
The Book
(Lupton, 2017)
• The book is about the culture and critical
sociological research about self-tracking
• The chapter you read was a literature review
• Lupton is interested in the influences,
discourses, technologies, power relations and
systems of thought related to self-tracking
phenomenon
• Thus, the implications, in the social domain,
of the politics, data practices and data
materializations!
• Socio-cultural phenomenon
Why interested?
(Lupton, 2017)
1. Self-tracking becomes
progressively digitized &
automated & shared with others
2. These data are stored in the cloud
& very personal data are available
to others beyond the self trackers
• Developers, app companies, data mining
companies, hackers, etc.
• Privacy and security issues – intimate
& personal data
3. These data become commercial, have
managerial value
Influences
(Lupton, 2017)
• Lively data (Savage 2013)

• “the constant generation of large masses of digital data as part
of the digital data economy, and the implications of this
practice for sociological research methods”
• Data about the lives of humans
• Circulation and politics of digital data (Beer & Burrows
2013)
• Data generate profit for others and are the livelihood of others
• Data have their own lives beyond the humans who generated them
• Data have social and material outcomes!
• Sense of self, social relationships, influence people’s
behaviours, and people’s life chances
Sources of knowledge
(Lupton, 2017)
• App and software descriptions

• Product reviews
• New reports
• White papers
• Social media & blog discussions
• HCI, social sciences,
• Twitter
• #quantifiedself, #lifelogging, #selftracking
• Quantified Life website
• Work of artists & designers
• Factiva
• Events
A socio-technological culture
emerges!
(Lupton, 2017)
Qualitative research about
quantitative culture!
Normalization!
(Lupton, 2017)
• Narcissists! • Quantified organizations

• Uber geeks • Quantified patient
• Navel gazing • Quantified doctor
• To a ‘movement in a • Quantified body
gadget-filled fitness • Quantified sex
craze’ • Quantified home
• Self-hacking Big data • Quantified mind
junkies!
• Quantified baby
• Quantified pet
Datafication of everything!
(Lupton, 2017)
• Fitness
• Health
• Telehealth, medicine, insurance
• Mood, Sentiment
• Meditation practices
• Fertility
• Sexuality
• DNA
• Environment
Convergence of discourses,
practices
(Lupton, 2017)
& technologies!
• Concepts of the self and self-entrepreneurialism
• Ideas of the body that champion regulation, control
and order
• Privileging of scientific knowledge
• Taking responsibility for one’s life is normalized
• Affordances of new technologies
• Digital data knowledge economy
• Commercial, governmental and managerial can
mobilize these technologies for their purpose
Characteristics of Survey,
Administrative
(Kitchin, 2015)
and Big Data
Cntd.
(Kitchin, 2015)
7 Attributes of Big Data
(Kitchin & Lauriault 2015)
Characteristics Small Data Big Data Attributes of Big Data

1. Volume Limited to large Very large Terabytes and pet bytes
2. Velocity Slow, Freeze-framed Fast Real & near-real time
Diverse in type, structured and unstructured, maybe
3. Variety Limited to wide Wide
temporally and spatially referenced
Entire In scope striving toward entire population and systems
4. Exhaustivity Samples
population n=all
5. Resolution & Coarse & weak to tight Tight & As detailed as possible and uniquely indexical in
Indexicality & strong strong identification
6. Relationality Weak to strong Strong Common fields to enable co-joining of datasets
7.
Flexible,xtensiona Low to middling High Can easily add to and extend, can expand in size
ble & Scalable
Enablers of Big Data
Kitchin, 2014:80
“big data has arisen due to the simultaneous

development of a number of enabling technologies,
infrastructures, techniques and processes, and
their rapid embedding in everyday business and
social practices and spaces”
“the places in which we live are now augmented,

monitored and regulated by dense assemblages of
data-enabled infrastructures and technologies ”
5 Enablers of Big Data
1. Computational Power
2. Networking
3. Pervasive and ubiquitous computing
4. Indexical and machine-readable identification
5. Data Storage
6. Big Data Analytics
1. Computational power
ENIAC Mainframe, 1946
Computational Power
Cost
Moore’s Law Computation
power would double about
every 18 Months
2. Networking
ARPANET 1969 ARPANET 1977
World’s supply of bandwidth

roughly doubles about every
6 months!
(Gilders 2000)
1st page of the WWW by Tim Berners Lee, 1992
3. Pervasive & Ubiquitous Computing
• One person/thing
interacting with many
computers/devices
seamlessly, and
technologies have been
made smart/technologically
enhanced to interact with
each other
devices/technologies to
share information,
• pervasive is computation
in everything and
ubiquitous is computing in
every place.
Pervasive computing is computation in
everything.
Ubiquitous computing is computation in
everyplace.
Pervasive computing needs to be situationally
aware.
Ubicomp requires continuous context and
awareness.
4. Indexical & Machine-Readable
Identification
• The labelling of things and people with unique identifiers in order to
identify, link and interconnect things & human attributes or
characteristics. These UIDs provide the means to do fine grain
Resolution is increasing
analysis. Devices have unique ID code for tracking, and these devices
also produce data that can be attributed to it.
• Characteristics:
a)
b)
More relationality
Universal in coverage
Uniqueness
c) Permanence
d)
Greater automation
Indispensable
• Examples:
• People: SIN #, passports #, health cards, biometrics, DNA, usernames,
passwords, chip & pin, swipe cards
• Places: Lat & Long, grid reference, postal code – granularity/resolution
• Things: mac addresses, bar codes, RFID chips
5. Data Storage
• Analog to utility
and data cloud computing!
6. Data Analytics
1. Volume
1. Number of Records – velocity & #

of generating devices
2. Storage required per record
3. Total Storage Volume in Bits
Some Big Data Volume Stats
2. Velocity
Big data are dynamic, a census is time stamped whereas real-
time data is continuously streaming, Facebook is 24/7.
Observations are continuously made overtime and systems are
always on.
Image
Source:
1. Frequency of generation http://ceras

is.com/201
4/04/30/e-
2. Frequency of handling, recording, commerce-

logistics/
publishing, storage
Image Source:
http://modmedsys.com/medical-equipment- Image Source:
repair/ http://www.vespermarine.com/xb8000-ais-
transponder.html/
http://www.k12science.org/materials/resources/realtimedata/
3. variety
4. Exhaustivity
• Sampling is a
technique used to
collect a
representative
set of data from
a total
population of all
potential data
• Big data is
about n=all
5. Resolution & Indexicality
• Big data are becoming more fine grained, individual
data, point data, fine resolution pixelated data.
Google Earth 2.5 Metre Resolution
Landsat Satellite Image 30 m resolution Google Street View

RM-Halton Geography
Source:
CSDS Consortium Member – Community
Development Halton Framework Data
RM-Halton Geography
Source:
CSDS Consortium Member - Regional Municipality of Halton Framework Data
& Indexicality
orcid.org/0000-0003-1847-2738
6. Relationality
• The ability
to co-join
datasets.
• Censuses are
structured
/
datasets
which are
relational http://http-server.carleton.ca/~fbrouard/T3010group
across time,
geography and
questions
7. Extensionality & Scalability
• Most research once conducted is quite inflexible,
forms do not change often, research design remain
the same for comparability reasons. Big data are:
• Extensionable – can add new fields
• Scalable – can expand readily Tweet example during the
superbowl
• Flexible – Obama campaign example
Hardware, distributed computing, storage and algorithms
allow for continuous searching and matching.
2 distinguishing traits of Big Data
1. Velocity 2. Exhaustivity
• Small data are slow • Big data are quick
• Big data n=all • Small data are sampled
Small data can hold the 5 traits of big data – volume,

resolution, indexicality, relationality, extensionality and
flexibility
See you next week!
Week 5: Data Infrastructures & You!
Week 1 – Sept. 6
Introduction - Why do we Measure & Count You!
Readings:
1.Bell, Genevieve, 2015, The Secret Life of Big Data
2.Musée des Arts et Métiers, 2018, Made to Measure
1st in-class activity:

Apply critical data studies observation techniques
to a set of indicators about mass shootings.
Assignment 1:
Data in the wild due Week 2 - Sept. 13, noon, 10%
Assignment 1:
Data in the wild - due Week 2 - Sept. 13, noon, 10%
• Look for any dataset any where and
download the data. (Not a data • The following is a list of ideas to
visualization nor a map, but the data help you describe the dataset but do
used to create those or a dataset on not limit yourselves to these:
its own). • Who produced the data and for what
purpose?
• Report the download process, where you • How were the data collected?
found these data (e.g., a portal, news • How are the variables defined?
blog, dashboard, etc.), and describe • Dates? Format? Geographic extent?
the dataset. • How were the data displayed?
• Explain your interest in this dataset, • Was there a manual, dictionary, or
what might you use the data for? methodological guide? (If so include
citation & URL)Any limitations with
• Be sure to provide a full citation to these data?
the dataset and any other related • Was there a cost?
documentation (Do not forget the URL). • Is there a licence?
• What rights do you have to use these
• You are welcome to use screen captures data?
and they will not count against your • Do you trust these data and if so why?
page count! Be sure to use captions if
you do.
Week 3 – Sept. 20
Small Data & You, LAC Guests
Reading:
Anderson, B., 1991, Census, Map, and Museum; in Imagined
Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism. Revised Edition, Verso, New York.
Library and Archives Canada. 2022. Historical Language Advisory:
Notice about the Collection. August 23, 2022.
https://library-archives.canada.ca/eng/Pages/notices-collection
.aspx
3.rd in-class activity:
Walkthrough of the new census access interface at LAC.
Meet the team at LAC who developed the new interface,
learn about agile development, data management,
connecting concepts across time in a database, UEX &
interface design.
Assignment 5: User Needs Assessment, Wk 13 – Dec.6

Midnight
Assignment 5:
User Needs Assessment - due Week 13 – Dec. 6 23:59 20%
Week 5 – Oct. 4
Data Infrastructures & You
Reading: Holt, J. and Vondereau, P. 2015, “Where the Internet Lives”:
Data Centers as Cloud Infrastructure, Chapter 3 in Signal
Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures eds. By L.
Parks and N. Starosielski.
Glanz, James. 2012. “Power, Pollution and the Internet.” The
New York Times, September 23, 2012, sec. Technology. Hogan,
Mél, Dustin Edwards, and Zane Griffin Talley Cooper. 2022. “5
Things about Critical Data Center Studies.” Commonplace,
October.
Discussing and identifying the social, economic, geographical,
political and environmental issues related to data infrastructures.
Assignment 2: Data in the news assignment is due!
Assignment 4:
Data and Human Rights - Week 10 – Nov. 15, noon, 10%
• Go to the
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Scientific Respons
ibility, Human Rights and Law Program
website and select one of the 10 reports. You can also select a case
studies from Geospatial Technologies and Human Rights page.
• Closely read the report, and explain in 2 pages, how Earth Observation (EO)
or remote sensing technologies and other geospatial technologies were used to
document a human rights issue. Include how the issues were reported, which
organizations were involved, how were data accessed, data sources, the kind
of sensor used and why, and your reflections on this type of analysis and
reporting. What is the value of this type of reporting? Who might it benefit?
• On that page you will also find a series of documents that provide insight
about how geospatial technologies are used in human rights work and some ABCs
about the technology. Do not hesitate to peruse these to help you with your
close reading. Also, roam around the AAAS website to learn more about what
they do and the project they are engaged in. It is not necessary for your 2
page document, but it provides insight about the kind of organization it is
and the work that it does. 123
Week 6 – Oct. 11
Data Institutions and You
Reading:
Lauriault, T. P. 2022, Looking Back Toward a “Smarter” Open
Data Future, Chapter 1 in The Future of Open Data edited by
P. Robinson and T. Scassa, University of Ottawa Press.

Involves identifying institutions related to beneficial
ownership and open contracting, understanding open data
catalogs and identifying the characteristics of what makes
open data open data and the reading of open data licences
Assignment 5: Have you started your User Needs assessment

assignment yet?
Week 7 – Oct. 18
Spatial Data & You
Reading:
Meier, P. 2015. The Rise of Digital Humanitarianism in Digital
Humanitarians: How Big Data is Changing the Face of
Humanitarian Response, CRC Press.

we examine the Arctic Spatial Data Infrastructure, the Atlas
of Canada and identify spatial data types, media and mapping
techniques.
Assignment 3: Data Walk, In-Class Wk 8 after the break
Study Break is next week!

Week 8 – Nov. 1
Data Walk
Reading: Powell, A. 2018, The Data Walkshop and Radical Bottom-up Data
Knowledge; Chapter 9 in Ethnography for a Data-Saturated World
by editors H. Knox and D. Nafus, Manchester University Press.
Resources:Powell, Alison. n.d. Data Walking – A Process for
Reflecting on the Production and Significance of Data. Accessed
August 15, 2023. https://www.datawalking.uk/.
In-class Assignment 3:
Data Walk due this evening WK8 at 21:00
Assignment 4: Data and Human Rights is due

in 2 week!
Assignment 3 – In-Class
Data Walk - Week 8 - Nov. 1, 21:00 10%
Week 9 – Nov. 8
Data Brokers & You
Reading: Lamdan, Sarah. 2022. In Data Cartels: The Companies That
Control and Monopolize Our Information, 1–26. Stanford
University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503633728-003
.
Chapter 1: The Data Cartels: An Overview.
Chapter 2: Data Brokering

Searching through an online geodemographic profiling
application to identify a category associated with your
postal code and assessing whether you fit the profile.
Assignment 4: Data and Human Rights is due

next week!
Week 10 – Nov. 15
Watching You
Reading:
Monahan, T. and Murakami Wood, D., 2018, Surveillance Studies a
Reader, Oxford University Press.
 Ch.1 Rule, Private Lives & Public Surveillance: Social
Control in the Computer Age
 Ch.4 Lyons, Surveillance Studies: An Overview
 Ch.9 Haggerty & Ericson, The Surveillant Assemblage
 Ch.22 Nelkin & Andrews, DNA Identification & Surveillance
Creep
 Ch.46 Clarke, Information Technology & Dataveillance
 Ch.72 Browne, Dark Matters: On the surveillance of Blackness
Assignment 4: 9th in-class activity:

Doing a close reading of a news
Data and Human article on surveillance and
Rights is due! discussion questions related to
chapters from the readings.
Week 11 – Nov. 22
AI/ML, Algorithms, Automation,
Robots & you
Reading: Crawford, Kate and Joler, Vladan. 2018. Anatomy
of an AI System: The Amazon Echo As An
Anatomical Map of Human Labor, Data and
Planetary Resources. AI Now Institute and Share
Lab. http://www.anatomyof.ai.

In-class we will screen the film Coded Bias
Directed and produced by Shalini Kantayya about
the work of Algorithmic Justice League MIT
Scholar Joy Buolamwini and the 11th in-class
activity will be conducted during the screening.
Assignment 5: User Needs Assessment

is due in 2 weeks!
Week 12 – Nov. 29
Data Activism, Data Justice & You
Reading:
D’Ignazio & Klein, 2020, Data Feminism, The MIT Press.
1.Introduction: Why Data Science Needs Feminism
2.Conclusion: Now Let’s Multiply
3.Our Values & Our Metrics for Holding Ourselves Accountable

Applying the data feminist evaluation framework to assess
this course & your work.
Assignment 5: User Needs Assessment is

due next week!
Week 13 – Dec. 6
Critical Data Studies & You
Readings:
Kitchin & Lauriault, 2018, Toward Critical Data Studies:
Charting & Unpacking Data Assemblages &Their Work, Ch 1 in
Thinking Big Data in Geography: New Regimes, New Research,
eds. Thatcher, Ekert & Shears.
Review & Exam
Assignment 5: User Needs Assessment is due!
Assignment 5:
User Needs Assessment - due Week 13 – Dec. 6 23:59 20%

Week4 COMS2200DIGH2700 BigDataandSociety BigDataandYou 27092023

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

Week4 COMS2200DIGH2700 BigDataandSociety BigDataandYou 27092023

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Week4 COMS2200DIGH2700 BigDataandSociety BigDataandYou 27092023

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

COMS2200/DIGH2700 Big Data & Society

Class: Wednesdays 18:00-2100 RB2200

September 27, 1998, Google Inc.

Tracey P. Lauriault - PAPM4000D Capstone - Fall 2023 9

Tracey P. Lauriault - PAPM4000D Capstone - Fall 2023 10

Tracey P. Lauriault - PAPM4000D Capstone - Fall 2023 11

Tracey P. Lauriault - PAPM4000D Capstone - Fall 2023 12

9 out of 11 in-class activities will be graded!

4th in-class activity:

Assignment 2: Data in the news is due next week!

• A person’s story through official records

• 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina

• Burning of Bosnia’s National Library “completely

It was “a diligently planned and executed military campaign aimed at

“the perpetrators paid close attention to hiding and destroying the

“records at a local level were largely irretrievable, at a higher level,

• Emigrated to St. Louis in the • To emigrate to the US, she had to

• Sarajevo-based Research • DNA extracted from blood samples

• These are the records of ordinary people

“The ethnographies described point to the novel

% of books per province

• Hirschman Study British

• A census is a form of biopower

“Guided by its imagined “The flow of subject

• Metrology gone personal & big!

• Lively data (Savage 2013)

• App and software descriptions

• Narcissists! • Quantified organizations

Characteristics Small Data Big Data Attributes of Big Data

“big data has arisen due to the simultaneous

“the places in which we live are now augmented,

ENIAC Mainframe, 1946

World’s supply of bandwidth

1st page of the WWW by Tim Berners Lee, 1992

1. Number of Records – velocity & #

1. Frequency of generation http://ceras

2. Frequency of handling, recording, commerce-

Google Earth 2.5 Metre Resolution

Landsat Satellite Image 30 m resolution Google Street View

Small data can hold the 5 traits of big data – volume,

1st in-class activity:

Assignment 5: User Needs Assessment, Wk 13 – Dec.6

Assignment 2: Data in the news assignment is due!

6th in-class activity:

Assignment 5: Have you started your User Needs assessment

7th in-class activity:

Assignment 3: Data Walk, In-Class Wk 8 after the break

Study Break is next week!

Assignment 4: Data and Human Rights is due

8th in-class activity:

Assignment 4: Data and Human Rights is due

Assignment 4: 9th in-class activity:

10th in-class activity:

Assignment 5: User Needs Assessment

11th in-class activity:

Assignment 5: User Needs Assessment is

Review & Exam

Assignment 5: User Needs Assessment is due!

You might also like