Presentation given at the HEA Social Sciences learning and teaching summit 'Exploring the implications of ‘the era of big data’ for learning and teaching'. A blog post outlining the issues discussed at the summit is available via: http://bit.ly/1lCBUIB

2. Exploring human behaviour in
interdisciplinary learning
environments
Ali Fisher

3. •History,
•American Studies,
•Public Diplomacy,
•Counter terrorism,
•Public health
Fields:

4. Is it possible to [ ... ]?
The most important phrase for using big data
in social science:

5. • The Big Data era is more than the size,
• Getting a birds eye view of data,
• Network Analysis,
• Examples,
• Getting started,

6. The open source Jihad
The ‘big’ in big data
Bigger is not necessarily better
No need for unsupervised digital landfill (Matt Asay)
a)Does not need to be
big.
b)What is big now, won’t
be in a couple of years.
c)It has to be appropriate
to the task.

7. A birds-eye-view of human networks

9. • Interviews
•Letters and archives
• WWII SIGINT (e.g. from Bletchley Park)
• Familial ties in Renaissance Florence
• Eurovision voting
• Transmission of disease
• ENRON email trail
• Online communities

10. Example: Open source relational data
66 important Jihadist accounts on Twitter

11. Tracking Response
Information sharing network over time
http://bit.ly/GZ43H8
Example: Open source relational data (part 2)

12. #Neda
#GR88
#HelpIranElection

14. The opportunity in the era of big data comes not from drowning
in a sea of data but navigating the most useful ways to derive
insight and develop innovative strategies from that data.
The easy availability of tools through which to analyse data is creating many exciting
opportunities for the digital humanities to explore the available data in new
interdisciplinary methods which compliment existing approaches.
Getting into what can be loosely termed big data does not have to come with a big
price tag, until users have begun to develop fairly large-scale projects.

15. GDELT
Opportunity to study events
over time.
AQ activity over last 10 years
Elections
Geography of news coverage
Network of news makers ‘the
global conversation’

16. Getting started:
• Work in interdisciplinary teams
• Become familiar with approaches via small scale experiments
(getting started is often the hardest part)
• Clarity on ethics.
• Ask is it possible to [ ... ]?