Data Mining Difference in the Age of Big Data: Communication and the Social Shaping of Genome Technologies from 1998 to 2007

Abstract

If the 1990s was all about the information superhighway and the network society, then the first 10 years of the 21st century is perhaps best described as the decade of data. Actors in different enterprises worked feverishly to develop innovative database and data mining technologies for institutional goals such as marketing, social networking, and scientific discovery. These researchers and data entrepreneurs follow an emerging belief that gathering and mining massive amounts of digital data will give objective insight into human relations and provide authentic representations for decision-making. On the surface, the technologies used to mine big data have the appearance of value-free and neutral inquiry. However, as information entrepreneurs use database and data mining technologies to purposively organize the social world, this seeming neutrality obfuscates domain assumptions and leaves cultural values and practices of power unexamined. We investigate the role of communication and social shaping of database and data mining technologies in the institutional context of genome science to understand how various stakeholders (scientists, policy makers, social scientists, and advocates) articulate racialized meanings with biological, physical, and big data. We found a rise in the use of racial discourse that suggests race has a genetic foundation.