In data we (don’t) trust : the public adrift in data-driven public opinion models

Splichal, Slavko (author)

This article seeks to address current debates comparing polls and opinion mining as empirically based figuration models of public opinion in the light of in-depth intellectual debates on the role and nature of public opinion that began after the French Revolution and the controversy over public opinion spurred by the invention of polls. Issues of historical quantification and re-conceptualisation of public opinion are addressed in four parts. The first summarises the history of the rise and fall of the concept of public opinion. The second re-examines the key controversies in the debates on the theoretical, empirical and social implications and consequences of the invention of polling. The third part scrutinises the datafication of public opinion that started with polling industry and continues in the age of big data and data mining. The final section discusses the controversial potentials of opinion-mining technology and suggests ways in which social scientists could critically respond to the big data and opinion-mining challenges in order to reintegrate the ideas of publicness, the public and public sphere into public opinion research.

• Language: English
• Keywords: datafication, opinion polling, opinion mining, publicworthiness, the public, public opinion
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FDV - Faculty of Social Sciences
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2022
• Number of pages: 13 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 9, iss. 1
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-136622
• UDC: 316.653:004.8
• ISSN on article: 2053-9517
• DOI: 10.1177/20539517221097319
• COBISS.SI-ID: 107524867
• Publication date in RUL: 12.05.2022

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Big data & society
• Publisher: SAGE
• ISSN: 2053-9517
• COBISS.SI-ID: 524621849

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
• Description: A creative commons license that bans commercial use, but the users don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: javno mnenje, javnomnenjske raziskave, podatkovno rudarjenje, masovni podatki

Projects

• Funder: ARRS - Slovenian Research Agency
• Project number: P5-0051
• Name: Množični mediji, javna sfera in družbene spremembe

• Funder: ARRS - Slovenian Research Agency
• Project number: N5-0086
• Name: Novi načini in globalni vzorci (re)produkcije spletnih novic