ABSTRACT
The use of repurposed big data is fundamentally complicated by new concerns for ethics, privacy, and social equity. Social theorists since the 1990s have recognized the rising threat of manufactured risks including those brought about by digital and technological rationalization. The production of big data has become one of the “hazards and insecurities induced and introduced by modernization itself”. Researchers have observed that the rapid amassing of big data has fast outpaced technological and legislative protection of individual privacy. Protecting individual privacy in a big data era demands an approach to data analysis that prioritizes control of the data by the owner. While the use of the monitoring data is useful for security services and official agencies to protect individuals from harm, dataveillance can also become an infringement of privacy. Qualitative researchers need to engage in critical practice to relocate and readdress the operation of big data, seeking to protect the privacy of self and others in research.
