ABSTRACT
Big Data is constituted by a nexus of technologies – data-processing hardware and software and a myriad of digitised apparatuses and processes networked through a constant data flow, each element embedded into the varied ecologies of current society. D. Laney points to three purported traits of Big Data that may relate to meanings, practices, and consequences. Some focus on governmental policies seeking to promote, use, or regulate Big Data. Politics are the actions or activities concerned with achieving and using power in a country or society. However, one fairly conventional way of separating between the concepts is to think of politics as the matter of principles and priorities, the debate or controversy side of the coin, and of policy as the resulting pragmatic efforts of governing bodies to regulate and order society. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
