Political Sciences and the Big Data Challenge. From Big Data in Politics to the Politics of Big Data

In continuity with the successful set of Panels organized during the 2017 ECPR General Conference in Oslo, the Section aims to offer a space within the ECPR context to critically discuss the nexus between Big Data and political science. It will do so by promoting a theoretically informed and empirically sound discussion along three lines of reflection. First, the Section will deal with the potentialities and the limitations of using large-scale datasets and supervised and unsupervised analytic techniques for leveraging our understanding of political dynamics from party dynamics, to political communications, to social movements and digital activism. Second, by considering Big Data as a complex set of cultural, political and scientific knowledge practices, the Section will offer an occasion to engage with the modes in which Big Data become a “political object” that is critically addressed by contentious grassroot efforts but also dealt within more conventional governance processes. Finally, the Section confronts the outcomes of Big Data usages in the political realm oscillating between enhanced accountability on the side of institutions and the reduction of citizens and their will to objectified data-assemblages that are mechanically treated rather than constructively accounted for. The Section comprises a set of Panels that aim to foster the convergence of scholars and researchers currently working on the value of Big Data for studying politics but also on the forms and the impacts of the politics of Big Data employing different theoretical, empirical and methodological approaches on Big Data.