19
Oct 14

2014 and the Ministry of Truth | Newspeak: Minitrue

Abigail Leffler says Big Data Brother… one bit at a time

ICT (Internet communications technology) enables gathering of digital data derived from our online interactions and other iterations such as those that come from GPS (Global Positioning System)-equipped devices. This interactivity being ‘a necessary condition for social, cultural and political participation’ (Lievrouw: 2013, p. 15) functions as a catalyst for change, development and humanitarian relief.

Just consider that all the tweets, blogposts and Facebook entries generate big data and so do all the ‘likes’ and endorsements and any other information pointing to user connection networks and to activity levels of individuals on the Net.

To give you an idea of how large big data actually is, every minute of every day we create

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17
Oct 14

Resource – open data Kenya

An interesting example of open data application – contribution by Catarina Nilsson.

Kenya launched an online portal with government data in 2011, claiming it to be the first one in Sub-Saharan Africa.

It says on the website: “The goal of opendata.go.ke is to make core government development, demographic, statistical and expenditure data available in a useful digital format for researchers, policymakers, ICT developers and the general public.”

As we see throughout this blog and elsewhere, more and more organisations make their data available openly, which opens a world of possibilities.

But how do we, as users without deeper insight into the data collection methods, assess the data quality?