Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye et al in Nature: “The breadcrumbs we leave behind when using our mobile phones—who somebody calls, for how long, and from where—contain unprecedented insights about us and our societies. Researchers have compared the recent availability of large-scale behavioral datasets, such as the ones generated by mobile phones, to the invention of the microscope, giving rise to the new field of computational social science. With mobile phone penetration rates reaching 90% and under-resourced national statistical agencies, the data generated by our phones—traditional Call Detail Records (CDR) but also high-frequency x-Detail Record (xDR)—have the potential to become a... (More >)
Towards matching user mobility traces in large-scale datasets
Paper by Daniel Kondor, Behrooz Hashemian, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye and Carlo Ratti: “The problem of unicity and reidentifiability of records in large-scale databases has been studied in different contexts and approaches, with focus on preserving privacy or matching records from different data sources. With an increasing number of service providers nowadays routinely collecting location traces of their users on unprecedented scales, there is a pronounced interest in the possibility of matching records and datasets based on spatial trajectories. Extending previous work on reidentifiability of spatial data and trajectory matching, we present the first large-scale analysis of user matchability in... (More >)
New methods help identify what drives sensitive or socially unacceptable behaviors
Mary Guiden at Physorg: “Conservation scientists and statisticians at Colorado State University have teamed up to solve a key problem for the study of sensitive behaviors like poaching, harassment, bribery, and drug use. Sensitive behaviors—defined as socially unacceptable or not compliant with rules and regulations—are notoriously hard to study, researchers say, because people often do not want to answer direct questions about them. To overcome this challenge, scientists have developed indirect questioning approaches that protect responders’ identities. However, these methods also make it difficult to predict which sectors of a population are more likely to participate in sensitive behaviors,... (More >)
Better Data for Doing Good: Responsible Use of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence
Report by the World Bank: “Describes opportunities for harnessing the value of big data and artificial intelligence (AI) for social good and how new families of AI algorithms now make it possible to obtain actionable insights automatically and at scale. Beyond internet business or commercial applications, multiple examples already exist of how big data and AI can help achieve shared development objectives, such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But ethical frameworks in line with increased uptake of these new technologies remain necessary—not only concerning data privacy but also relating to the... (More >)
What difference does data make? Data management and social change
Paper by Morgan E. Currie and Joan M. Donovan: “The purpose of this paper is to expand on emergent data activism literature to draw distinctions between different types of data management practices undertaken by groups of data activists. The authors offer three case studies that illuminate the data management strategies of these groups. Each group discussed in the case studies is devoted to representing a contentious political issue through data, but their data management practices differ in meaningful ways. The project Making Sense produces their own data on pollution in Kosovo. Fatal Encounters collects “missing data” on police homicides... (More >)
Recalculating GDP for the Facebook age
Gillian Tett at the Financial Times: How big is the impact of Facebook on our lives? That question has caused plenty of hand-wringing this year, as revelations have tumbled out about the political influence of Big Tech companies. Economists are attempting to look at this question too — but in a different way. They have been quietly trying to calculate the impact of Facebook on gross domestic product data, ie to measure what our social-media addiction is doing to economic output…. Kevin Fox, an Australian economist, thinks there is. Working with four other economists, including Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor... (More >)
Big Data Ethics and Politics: Toward New Understandings
Introductory paper by Wenhong Chen and Anabel Quan-Haase of Special Issue of the Social Science Computer Review: “The hype around big data does not seem to abate nor do the scandals. Privacy breaches in the collection, use, and sharing of big data have affected all the major tech players, be it Facebook, Google, Apple, or Uber, and go beyond the corporate world including governments, municipalities, and educational and health institutions. What has come to light is that enabled by the rapid growth of social media and mobile apps, various stakeholders collect and use large amounts of data, disregarding the... (More >)
Data-Driven Development
Report by the World Bank: “…Decisions based on data can greatly improve people’s lives. Data can uncover patterns, unexpected relationships and market trends, making it possible to address previously intractable problems and leverage hidden opportunities. For example, tracking genes associated with certain types of cancer to improve treatment, or using commuter travel patterns to devise public transportation that is affordable and accessible for users, as well as profitable for operators. Data is clearly a precious commodity, and the report points out that people should have greater control over the use of their personal data. Broadly speaking, there are three... (More >)
Artificial Intelligence: Risks to Privacy and Democracy
Karl Manheim and Lyric Kaplan at Yale Journal of Law and Technology: “A “Democracy Index” is published annually by the Economist. For 2017, it reported that half of the world’s countries scored lower than the previous year. This included the United States, which was demoted from “full democracy” to “flawed democracy.” The principal factor was “erosion of confidence in government and public institutions.” Interference by Russia and voter manipulation by Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 presidential election played a large part in that public disaffection. Threats of these kinds will continue, fueled by growing deployment of artificial intelligence (AI)... (More >)
Better “nowcasting” can reveal what weather is about to hit within 500 meters
MIT Technology Review: “Weather forecasting is impressively accurate given how changeable and chaotic Earth’s climate can be. It’s not unusual to get 10-day forecasts with a reasonable level of accuracy. But there is still much to be done. One challenge for meteorologists is to improve their “nowcasting,” the ability to forecast weather in the next six hours or so at a spatial resolution of a square kilometer or less. In areas where the weather can change rapidly, that is difficult. And there is much at stake. Agricultural activity is increasingly dependent on nowcasting, and the safety of many sporting... (More >)
