448 - Section on Sociology of Culture Invited Session. Big Data and the Study of Culture: Prospects for the Future

Session Submission Type: Paper Session

Abstract

In an increasingly digitized world, scholars and audiences alike confront an abundance of information. While sociologists are no strangers to the analysis of content available from media industries and the like, the proliferation of digital content has created both new problems (e.g., sifting through the mounds of words) and new opportunities (e.g., topic modelling and other techniques for navigating through and analysing such massive amounts of content). This session focuses on both these challenges and opportunities that sociologists face in this era of “big data”—doing so in a way that resonates with recent advances in cultural sociology, both theoretical and methodological.

Sub Unit

• Section Invited

Session Organizer

• Timothy J. Dowd, Emory University

Presider

• Timothy J. Dowd, Emory University

Individual Presentations

• Big Data: Can It Solve Cultural Sociology’s Behavioral Problems? - Emily Ann Marshall, University of Michigan; Hana Shepherd, State University of New Jersey-Rutgers

• Modeling an Ecology of Music Genres Using Big Data: The Case of the Emergence of Electronic Dance Music Genres in the UK, 1985-1999 - Alex van Venrooij, University of Amsterdam

• Measuring Moderately Subtle Dimensions of Culture with Medium-Size Data - Arnout van de Rijt, State University of New York-Stony Brook; Steven Skiena, State University of New York-Stony Brook; Charles Ward, Google

• Measuring Meanings in a World of Big Data - John W. Mohr, University of California-Santa Barbara

Discussant

• Timothy J. Dowd, Emory University