Spatial big data and anxieties of control

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4476175
AutoresAgnieszka Leszczynski (0000-0002-5167-0499, University of Auckland, autor de correspondencia)
Año2015
Volumen33
Número6
Páginas965-984
Fecha de publicación2015-12-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaEnvironment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0263775815595814
OpenAlexW2229323108
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas47
Referencias citadas18

Kate Crawford has recently suggested that the everyday lived experience of big data is one of "surveillant anxiety": the fear that the personal information that individuals disclose about themselves and that others generate about them is intercepted and analyzed by the intelligence services within emergent praxes of pervasive dataveillance. I empirically assess this notion of "surveillant anxiety" in the context of spatial big data. Drawing on the results of a small-scale survey of understandings of location data collection and dissemination via mobile devices and their contextualization against other available data, I demonstrate that individuals are seemingly more concerned with transparency in data collection and in controlling flows of personal spatial information about themselves than they are with practices of data capture or their eventual use(s). Rather than a generalizable societal condition of "surveillant anxiety," I argue that the realities of living in a (spatial) big data present are better characterized in terms of what I designate as "anxieties of control": the desire to discern (be aware of) and direct (determine the disclosure of) personal spatial big data flows about oneself while feeling that any attempt at exerting such control is effectively futile

Anxiety · Big data · Computer security · Context (archaeology · Control (management · Data collection · Data mining · Data science · Feeling · Geography · Internet privacy · Social science · Sociology · Transparency (behavior · Computer Science · Data-Driven Disease Surveillance · Human Mobility and Location-Based Analysis · Privacy, Security, and Data Protection · Psychology · Social Psychology