Big Data & Society

New in Big Data & Society 🗞️

Yehan Wang examines “algorithmic flexibility” on e-commerce platforms, showing how everyday users resist and influence algorithmic outcomes through practical, creative strategies.
🔗 doi.org/10.1177/2053...

New in Big Data & Society 🗞️

Pengfei Fu and Jian Lin trace how China’s data annotation industry shifts from transnational crowdwork toward state-regulated infrastructures, showing how formalisation reshapes standards, surveillance, and worker autonomy across the AI stack.

🔗 doi.org/10.1177/2053...

Please join us today for BD&S 2026 Colloquium, Panel 2: Infrastructures in Time: Genealogies of Big Data.

16:00–18:00 GMT / 11:00 AM–1:00 PM EST
uky.zoom.us/j/86848639105

#STS #CriticalDataStudies

Tomorrow: Panel 2, Infrastructures in Time. Join us for a conversation on genealogies of big data and why history matters for accountability now. uky.zoom.us/j/86848639105
#STS #DataGovernance

In 2 days: Panel 2 traces how data extraction and management today are shaped by longer histories of governance and infrastructure. Feb 18 uky.zoom.us/j/86848639105
#CriticalDataStudies #STS

Speaker spotlight: Lucy Suchman critically engages AI and HCI and extends that work to contemporary militarism, asking whose bodies are incorporated into military systems and with what consequences. Panel 2 (Feb 18) uky.zoom.us/j/86848639105
#AI #STS

Speaker spotlight: Bolun Zhang studies infrastructure where material systems meet political–economic regimes, with a focus on China and Global China and computational methods in social science. Panel 2 (Feb 18) uky.zoom.us/j/86848639105
#Infrastructure #STS

Speaker spotlight: Os Keyes researches gender, disability, and power in AI, alongside the history and sociology of scientific work around trans medicine. Panel 2 (Feb 18) uky.zoom.us/j/86848639105
#CriticalAI #STS

Speaker spotlight: Sun-ha Hong examines uncertainty, doubt, myth, and (dis)belief around AI and data-driven technologies. Panel 2 (Feb 18) uky.zoom.us/j/86848639105
#AI #STS

Genealogies aren’t nostalgia, they’re accountability tools. Panel 2 asks how historical continuities can inform more critical approaches to data politics. Feb 18 uky.zoom.us/j/86848639105
#DataGovernance #STS

From colonial data regimes to Cold War computing and global telecoms, infrastructures shape how data gets extracted, managed, and mobilised today. Feb 18 uky.zoom.us/j/86848639105
#BigData #STS

Panel 2 traces how today’s “data systems” sit inside longer histories of information governance, infrastructure, and extraction. Feb 18 uky.zoom.us/j/86848639105
#STS #CriticalDataStudies

Join us for BD&S 2026 Colloquium, Panel 2: Infrastructures in Time: Genealogies of Big Data (Feb 18 | 16:00–18:00 GMT / 11:00 AM–1:00 PM EST) uky.zoom.us/j/86848639105
#CriticalDataStudies #STS #BigData

It should include your disciplinary background, current position and university, a brief overview of your interest in becoming a Co-Editor (300 words), five keywords describing your expertise and a copy of your current CV. (7/7)

If you have questions, please contact the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Matthew Zook (zook@uky.edu)

To express interest in becoming a Co-Editor, please fill in this short form by February 20, 2026 forms.gle/TqQPYJ1L15gX... (6/n)

The journal’s key purpose is to provide a space for connecting debates about the field of Big Data practices and how they are reconfiguring academic, social, industry, business, and governmental relations, expertise, methods, concepts, and knowledge. (5/n)

Big Data & Society (BD&S, IF: 5.9) is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that publishes interdisciplinary work principally in the social sciences, humanities, and computing, and their intersections with the arts and natural sciences, on the implications of Big Data for societies. (4/n)

The role requires overseeing peer review, including identifying and inviting referees, synthesizing responses to the author from referees’ reviews, and recommending decisions. It also involves contributing to oversight of guest editors as part of Special Theme collections. (3/n)

computational technologies. You will join an international, interdisciplinary team from diverse social science disciplines such as media and communications, science and technology studies, computational sociology, journalism, law, geography, anthropology, and digital humanities. (2/n)

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

The journal Big Data & Society (journals.sagepub.com/home/bds) is calling for expressions of interest in serving as a Co-Editor for a three-year term beginning in March 2026

As a Co-Editor, you will help shape scholarship around social, economic, political, and ethical implications of Big Data and

📢 New in Big Data & Society

Zimmer traces links between the Enron email corpus and contemporary foundation models, using the concept of “model collapse” to examine how AI training data shape today’s knowledge infrastructures.

🔗 journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

📢A new article in Big Data & Society examines conversational AI through a Habermassian lens, arguing that systems like ChatGPT risk “colonizing” conversations:

🔗 journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

📢 New in Big Data & Society

Whose voice counts? Arsenault & Kreps examine whether large language models help close participation gaps in public rulemaking. LLMs make comment-writing easier and improve comment quality—but do not improve policy comprehension.

🔗 journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

Whose voice counts? The role of large language models in public commenting - Amelia C Arsenault, Sarah Kreps, 2026 The notice-and-comment period in US federal rulemaking fosters civic engagement but has long been dominated by well-resourced actors with specialized knowledge,...

Do large language models democratize public participation in the regulatory process, or exacerbate existing gaps? In a new article in @bigdatasoc.bsky.social, Sarah Kreps and I use two survey experiments to explore the democratic opportunities and risks of LLMs:
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Generative AI chatbots avoid sexism—but not ageism.
Interviews with chatbots themselves reveal double standards in “political correctness” and how AI imagines users by age and gender.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

#GenerativeAI #DigitalAgeism #AlgorithmicBias #STS

New in Big Data & Society:
China’s Health Code Systems weren’t seamless surveillance tools—they were patchwork assemblages held together by street-level officials doing intense accountability labor under pressure. Surveillance works through mess, not automation: journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

🚨 New in Big Data & Society 🚨

"Who’s coding? An analysis of UK bootcamp experiences and outcomes” by Kate M. Miltner, Giti Kadar-Satat, Emily Ashton, and Lauren Scorer.

🔓: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/....

#codingbootcamp #digitalskills #datascience

✨ New in Big Data & Society ✨

"'Missing Standardization': Identifying harmful language ideologies in natural language processing work” by Melissa Gasparotto.

🔓: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

#NLP #languageideologies #Indigenousdatasovereignty

Today: BD&S 2026 Colloquium, Panel 1: Constructing Alternatives through Community Data & Data Activism. Join us live. uky.zoom.us/j/85254638887
#DataActivism #DataJustice

Join us TOMORROW for BD&S 2026 Colloquium, Panel 1. How do communities use data to build alternatives and advance justice and democracy while navigating bias and power in data collection and governance? Jan 21 | 16:00–18:00 GMT / 11:00 AM–1:00 PM EST uky.zoom.us/j/85254638887
#DataActivism