Dealing with Big Data

TL;DR

This chapter discusses how humanities and social sciences can adapt traditional research methods to effectively incorporate big data, emphasizing methodological rigor and discipline-specific approaches.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for integrating big data into humanities and social sciences while respecting traditional disciplinary values.

Findings

Encourages closer attention to methodological issues with big data

Proposes discipline-grounded approaches to big data research

Highlights the importance of enhancing existing methods

Abstract

This book chapter attempts to counter anxieties in the humanities and social science about the role of big data in research by focusing on approaches which, by being firmly grounded in the traditional values of disciplines, enhance existing methods to produce fruitful research. Big data poses many methodological challenges, but these pressures should prompt scholars to pay much closer attention to methodological issues than they have in the past.