Article:
From Data Analytics to Data Hermeneutics. Online Political Discussions, Digital Methods and the Continuing Relevance of Interpretive Approaches

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dc.creatorGerbaudo, Paolo
dc.date.accessioned2018-09-25T15:13:20Z
dc.date.available2018-09-25T15:13:20Z
dc.date.issued2016
dc.description.abstractTo advance the study of digital politics it is urgent to complement data analytics with data hermeneutics to be understood as a methodological approach that focuses on the interpretation of the deep structures of meaning in social media conversations as they develop around various political phenomena, from digital protest movements to online election campaigns. The diffusion of Big Data techniques in recent scholarship on political behavior has led to a quantitative bias in the understanding of online political phenomena and a disregard for issues of content and meaning. To solve this problem it is necessary to adapt the hermeneutic approach to the conditions of social media communication, and shift its object of analysis from texts to datasets. On the one hand, this involves identifying procedures to select samples of social media posts out of datasets, so that they can be analysed in more depth. I describe three sampling strategies – top sampling, random sampling and zoom-in sampling – to attain this goal. On the other hand, “close reading” procedures used in hermeneutic analysis need to be adapted to the different quality of digital objects vis-à-vis traditional texts. This can be achieved by analysing posts not only as data-points in a dataset, but also as interventions in a collective conversation, and as utterances of broader “discourses”. The task of interpretation of social media data also requires an understanding of the political and social contexts in which digital political phenomena unfold, as well as taking into account the subjective viewpoints and motivations of those involved, which can be gained through in-depth interviews, and other qualitative social science methods. Data hermeneutics thus holds promise for a closing of the gap between quantitative and qualitative approaches in the study of digital politics, allowing for a deeper and more holistic understanding of online political phenomena.en
dc.identifier.doi10.25969/mediarep/1012
dc.identifier.doi10.14361/dcs-2016-0207
dc.identifier.urihttp://digicults.org/files/2018/01/Paolo-Gerbaudo_Data-hermeneutics.pdf
dc.identifier.urihttps://mediarep.org/handle/doc/3168
dc.languageeng
dc.publishertranscript
dc.publisher.placeBielefeld
dc.relation.isPartOfissn:2364-2114
dc.relation.ispartofseriesDigital Culture & Society
dc.rightsCreative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 Generic
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
dc.subjectMassendatende
dc.subjectdigitale Politikde
dc.subjectHermeneutikde
dc.subjectDatenanalysede
dc.subjectqualitative Methodede
dc.subjectStichprobede
dc.subjectBig Dataen
dc.subjectdigital politicsen
dc.subjecthermeneuticsen
dc.subjectdata analyticsen
dc.subjectdata analysisen
dc.subjectqualitative methodsen
dc.subjectrandom samplingen
dc.subjectclose readingen
dc.subject.ddcddc:005
dc.titleFrom Data Analytics to Data Hermeneutics. Online Political Discussions, Digital Methods and the Continuing Relevance of Interpretive Approachesde
dc.typearticle
dc.type.statuspublishedVersion
dcterms.bibliographicCitationGerbaudo, Paolo (2016): From Data Analytics to Data Hermeneutics. Online Political Discussions, Digital Methods and the Continuing Relevance of Interpretive Approaches. In: Digital Culture & Society 2 (2), S. 95–111. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/1012.
dspace.entity.typeArticleen
local.coverpage2021-05-29T02:31:12
local.identifier.firstpublishedhttps://doi.org/10.14361/dcs-2016-0207
local.source.epage111
local.source.issue2
local.source.spage95
local.source.volume2
local.subject.gndhttps://d-nb.info/gnd/4802620-7
local.subject.gndhttps://d-nb.info/gnd/4128972-9
local.subject.gndhttps://d-nb.info/gnd/4123037-1
local.subject.gndhttps://d-nb.info/gnd/4137346-7
local.subject.gndhttps://d-nb.info/gnd/4057502-0
local.subject.wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q858810
local.subject.wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q102686
local.subject.wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1988917
local.subject.wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49908
local.subject.wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1042156

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2(2) 2016: Politics of Big Data