ABSTRACT
The prevalence and potential of big data has captured the imagination of public media since early articles in The Economist and The New York Times. Big data across a broad range of fields is collected, analyzed, stored, and disseminated digitally. The main big data types commonly cited include social media data, transactional data, administrative data, sensor data, and personal data, such as from tracking devices. Big data is generating immense interest from researchers, research grant funding bodies, industries, marketing companies, and beyond. Within the academic community, some have argued that big data renders small-scale research, commonly used in the social sciences and humanities, potentially at risk. This chapter debates the role of big data for researchers, while considering the questions that big data poses for qualitative researchers. As a consequence of the internet and the associated mobile technologies, big data is networked, connected, and traceable, but more difficult to analyze with conventional statistical analysis software.
