The empiricist’s challenge: Asking meaningful questions in political science in the age of big data
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In this article, the authors map these promises and challenges in detail and introduce five highly innovative contributions collected in this special issue, which illustrate impressively the potential of big data in the social sciences.Abstract:
The continuously growing use of digital services has provided social scientists with an expanding reservoir of data, potentially holding valuable insights into human behavior and social systems. This has often been associated with the terms “big data” and “computational social science.” Using such data, social scientists have argued, will enable us to better understand social, political, and economic life. Yet this new data type comes not only with promises but with challenges as well. These include developing standards for data collection, preparation, analysis, and reporting; establishing more systematic links between established theories within the existing body of research in the social sciences; and moving away from proofs-of-concepts toward the systematic development and testing of hypotheses. In this article, we map these promises and challenges in detail and introduce five highly innovative contributions collected in this special issue. These articles illustrate impressively the potential ...read more
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The Logic of Connective Action: Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics, by W. Lance Bennett and Alexandra Segerberg
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Research on political information and social media: Key points and challenges for the future
TL;DR: The impact of digital platforms on the production, distribution, and consumption of political information is examined from a systematic literature review and an approach to pending future challenges for research in this highly dynamic field is offered.
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Retooling Politics: How Digital Media Are Shaping Democracy
TL;DR: In this paper, a clear-eyed guide steps back from hyperbolic hopes and fears to offer a balanced account of what aspects of politics are being shaped by digital media and what remains unchanged.
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The Twitter parliamentarian database: Analyzing Twitter politics across 26 countries
TL;DR: The Twitter Parliamentarian Database (TPD), a multi-source and manually validated database of parliamentarians on Twitter, is introduced, finding striking cross-party and particularly cross-national differences in how parliamentarians engage in politics on the social media platform.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups.
Sidney C. Sufrin,Mancur Olson +1 more
Journal ArticleDOI
Critical questions for big data
danah boyd,Kate Crawford +1 more
TL;DR: The era of Big Data has begun as discussed by the authors, where diverse groups argue about the potential benefits and costs of analyzing genetic sequences, social media interactions, health records, phone logs, government records, and other digital traces left by people.
Book
The Psychology of Survey Response
TL;DR: In this article, the role of memory in response to survey questions is discussed. And the impact of the application of cognitive models to survey measurement is discussed, as well as the effect of these models on survey reporting of sensitive topics.
Book
Case Study Research: Principles and Practices
TL;DR: Case Study Research: Principles and Practices as mentioned in this paper provides a general understanding of the case study method as well as specific tools for its successful implementation, which are applicable in a variety of fields including anthropology, business and management, communications, economics, education, medicine, political science, psychology, social work, and sociology.