Four conceptual lenses for journalism amidst big data: Towards an emphasis on epistemological challenges

Abstract

Th e social world is increasingly quantifi ed, rendered as digital trace information – geolocation, web metrics, self-tracking, social graphs, likes and shares, and much more. Such data may be collected and analysed at ever larger scale amid the growing ubiquity of mobile devices, always-on sensors, ‘smart’ homes, algorithms and automated systems, digital repositories and archives, and the many fragments of social activity represented by ones and zeroes ( Kitchin and McArdle 2016 ; Mayer-Sch ö nberger and Cukier 2013 ).