panel announcement: theorizing big data

Last week we highlighted Sex Work and the Web , which is the first of three special panels at #TtW14 . This week we’re excited to announce our second special panel, Theorizing Big Data. Tech companies are organizing their research around Big Data analyses, but they’re not the only ones; universities, government institutions, and just about anyone with a research budget are all heading out to go prospecting, too. But is the new gold rush all it’s cracked up to be? What can big data really tell us, and about what—or whom? At what cost? Zeynep Tufekci —who, let’s be honest, is TtW Royalty—organized and will moderate this discussion. She’s an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina and a fellow at Center for Information Technology at Princeton University. Joining her: Kate Crawford is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research (Social Media Collective), a Visiting Professor at the MIT Center for Civic Media, and a Senior Fellow at the Information Law Institute at NYU. Winter Mason is a data scientist at Facebook, and is currently on leave from Stevens Institute of Technology. Janet A. Vertesi is a sociologist of science and technology at Princeton, where she is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Faculty Fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy. We hope you’ll join us for this discussion on the explosive popularity—as well as the potential benefits and dangers—of big data research.