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CHAPTER 14
Social media and Big Data
by governments and private companies. The aim of this chapter is to suggest some
possible legal and policy solutions both to boost a more democratic access to infor-
mation and to protect individual and collective freedom.
BIG DATA: THE ASYMMETRIC DISTRIBUTION OF CONTROL
OVER INFORMATION AND POSSIBLE REMEDIES
Big Data is not something new, but currently at the final stage of a long evolution of the
capability to analyze data using computer resources. Big Data represents the convergence
of different existing technologies that permit enormous data-centers to be built, create
high-speed electronic highways and have ubiquitous and
on-demand network access to
computing resources (cloud computing). These technologies offer substantially unlimited
storage, allow the transfer of huge amounts of data from one place to another, and allow
the same data to be spread in different places and re-aggregated in a matter of seconds.
All these resources permit a large amount of information from different sources
to be collected and the petabytes of data generated by social media represent the ideal
context in which Big Data analytics can be used. The whole dataset can be continu-
ously monitored by analytics, in order to identify the emerging trends in the flows of
data and obtaining real-time or nearly real-time results in a way that is revolutionary
and differs from the traditional sampling method (
The Aspen
Institute, 2010
).
The availability of these new technologies and large datasets gives a competitive
advantage to those who own them in terms of capability to predict new economic,
social and political trends.
In the social media context, these asymmetries are evident with regard to the
commercial platforms (e.g., Twitter, Google
+
, etc.), in which the service providers
play a substantial role in term of control over information. Conversely, when the
social media are based on open, decentralized and
participative architectures, these
asymmetries are countered; for this reason in the following paragraphs we will con-
sider the role assumed by open architectures and open data in order to reach a wider
access to information and a lower concentration of control over information.
In order to control and limit the information asymmetries related to Big Data and
their consequences, in terms of economic advantages and social control, it seems to
be necessary the adoption of various remedies, as the complexity
of the phenomenon
requires different approaches.
First of all, it is important to achieve a better allocation of the control over infor-
mation. For this purpose, it is necessary to adopt adequate measures to control those
who have this power, in order to limit possible abuses and illegitimate advantages. At
the same time, we need to increase access to the information and the number of sub-
jects able to create and manage large amounts of data, spreading the informational
power currently in the hands of a few bodies.
The need to control these great aggregations of data is also related to their politi-
cal and strategic relevance and should lead the introduction of a mandatory notifica-
tion of the creation of a big and important database—as happened at the beginning of
177
the computer age when there was a similar concentration
of power in the hands of a
few subjects due to the high cost of the first mainframes (
Article 29 Data Protection
Working Party, 2005; Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, 1997; Bygrave,
2002
)
3
—and the creation of specific international independent authorities. These
authorities will be able to control the invasive attitude of governmental power with
regard to large databases and the power of the owner of Big Data, but can also have
an important role in the definition of specific standards for data security.
This will be a long and tortuous journey, as it is based on international coop-
eration; nevertheless, it is important to start it as soon as possible, using the exist-
ing international bodies and multilateral dialogues between countries. At the same
time, any solutions should be graduated in an appropriate manner, avoiding the
involvement of every kind of data-farm built somewhere in the world,
but consid-
ering only the data-farms with an absolutely remarkable dimension or a consider-
able importance because of the data collected (e.g., police or military databases).
Access to data and data sharing are other two central aspects that should be con-
sidered in order to limit the power of the owners of Big Data and give society the op-
portunity to have access to knowledge. From this perspective, a key role is played by
open data (
Veenswijk et al., 2012; Executive Office of the President, National Science
and Technology Council, 2013
)
4
and the above-mentioned policies about transparency
of the information society (i.e., notification), which permit to know who holds great
informational power and ask to these entities to open their archives.
Opening public databases and potentially private archives (
Deloitte, 2012; Enel,
2013; Nike Inc., 2013; ASOS API project, 2013; Canadian Goldcorp Inc., 2013
) to
citizens and giving them raw data not only reduces the power
of the owners of infor-
mation, in terms of the exclusive access to the data, but also limits their advantage in
terms of technical and cultural analysis skills (Open Knowledge Foundation, 2004;
Cyganiak and Jentzsch, 2011; Kroes, 2011
).
5
Big Data: The asymmetric distribution of control over information
3
See Article 8 (a) of the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing
of Personal Data, opened for signature in Strasbourg on 28 January 1981, recital 48 in the preamble to
Directive 1995/46 and Articles 18–21 of Directive.
4
On the differences and interactions between Big Data and open data see A. Marton, M. Avital and T.
Blegind Jensen, 2013, above at fn. 2, which point out that “while Big Data is about distributed com-
putation and infrastructures, open data is about standards on how to make data machine-readable, and
hence linkable.”
From a European perspective, see the recent approved Directive 2013/37/EU of the
European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2013, amending Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-
use of public sector information. Available:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/JOHtml.do?uri=OJ:L:2013:175:S
OM:EN:HTML
[Dec. 10, 2013].
5
The access to data does not mean that everyone will immediately have new knowledge and predictive
capacity, because, as mentioned above, technical equipment is necessary. However, the availability of
the data permits citizens to put together their economic and cultural resources, even without a business-
oriented action, in order to constitute groups dedicated to the analysis and processing of the raw data;
see the projects and activities of the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF), which is a non-profit organ-
isation founded in 2004 and dedicated “to promoting open data and open content in all their forms –
including
government data, publicly funded research and public domain cultural content”; From this
perspective, social media offer clear examples of the virtues of open data and open architecture (e.g.,
Dbpedia, Wikipedia, etc.).
