The myth of big data

Increasingly, institutions in the fields of research and policymaking, as well as the corporate realm, base decision-making and knowledge production on metrics calculated from what is metaphorically called ‘big data’. In his 2013 inaugural lecture ‘A Necessary Disenchantment: Myth, Agency and Injustice in a Digital World’, Nick Couldry discusses the mythical claim that big data is generating a new and better form of social knowledge.