The Challenge of Big Data for the Social Sciences

Speaker(s): Professor Kenneth Benoit, Kenneth Cukier
Chair: Professor Simon Hix

Recorded on 16 February 2015 in Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House.

The ubiquity of "big data" about social, political and economic phenomena has the potential to transform the way we approach social science. In this talk, Professor Benoit outlines the challenges and opportunities to social sciences caused by the rise of big data, with applications and examples. He discusses the rise of the field of data science, and whether this is a threat or a blessing for the traditional social scientific model and its ability to help us better understand society.

Kenneth Benoit (@kenbenoit) is currently Professor of Quantitative Social Research Methods at LSE. He is also Part-Time Professor in the Department of Political Science at Trinity College Dublin, and has previously held a position at the Central European University (Budapest). He is currently Principal Investigator on 5-year grant funded by the European Research Council entitled QUANTESS: Quantitative Text Analysis for the Social Sciences.

Kenneth Cukier (@kncukier) is the Data Editor at The Economist, following a decade at the paper covering business and technology, and as a foreign correspondent (most recently in Japan from 2007-12). Previously he was the technology editor of the Wall Street Journal Asia in Hong Kong and worked at the International Herald Tribune in Paris. In 2002-04 he was a research fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He is the co-author of "Big Data: A Revolution that Will Transform How We Work, Live and Think" (2013) and "Learning with Big Data: The Future of Education" (2014) with Viktor Mayer-Schönberger.

Simon Hix (@simonjhix) is Professor of European and Comparative Politics and Head of Department of Government at LSE.