1.16 CSS: Challenges

• Skills: Need advanced and new skills for capturing, collecting, storing, manipulating and analyzing often un/semi-structured big datasets
  • e.g. interacting with APIs, machine learning, social network analysis
• Social scientists vs. computer scientists
  • Computer scientists dominate field of big social data but often lack the theoretical background to come up with interesting questions
  • Computer scientists often lack training in research methodology
    • Big data requires same standards as “small” data (Grimmer 2015)
    • Careful research design, sampling strategy, measurement etc.
• Independence: Dependence on big companies dangerous..
• Many others.. garbage in & garbage out etc.
  • Q: What are other challenges?

References

Grimmer, Justin. 2015. “We Are All Social Scientists Now: How Big Data, Machine Learning, and Causal Inference Work Together.” PS Polit. Sci. Polit. 48 (1): 80–83.