Framing Big Data: A Discourse Analysis of the Media Frames of Aggregate Mobile Phone Data in Germany

• In Event: Media Frames and Frame Building

Abstract

The paper explains the process and the results of a discourse analysis of media frames of the 2011 “Handygate affair” in Germany. Firstly, we develop a methodical approach to examine multimodal and transmedia communication. Building on that, we secondly reconstruct the media frames employed to establish ‘big data’ as a phenomenon and a problem. To this end, news reporting and messages from online sources were coded that formed the public discourse on the Handygate affair. There, state authorities collected and analyzed mobile phone data during the commemorative events of the Dresden bombings in February 2011. The paper thus looks at how big data is framed as presenting threats and chances to social well-being as well as to private and public security. Moreover, combining approaches from frame semantics, multimodal studies, and Grounded Theory, the paper develops a qualitative discourse analysis that allows for reconstructing verbal and visual discursive patterns from networked discourse.

Authors

• Christian Pentzold, Technische Universitaet Chemnitz / HIIG

• Charlotte Fischer, Humboldt U Berlin

• Claudia Fraas, Technische U Chemnitz