Big Data presents several potential ethical and social challenges.

Welcome back,

This week’s topic is on how big data presents several potential ethical and social challenges.  Resources used came from research gate, you tube and emerald open research

Big Data is data that contains greater variety, arriving in increasing volumes and with more velocity. Big data is larger, more complex data sets especially from new data sources.

The following video gave me a better understanding of big data,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVSfJhssXUA

Big Data has a wide range of social effects, they are used to improve the decision making and efficiency in businesses and sectors. These days 97.2% of successful companies are spending money on big data and AI (Artificial intelligence). Data driven decision making plays a major role in number of industries including banking, insurance and telecoms. Big Data has been used to reduce fraud, stop disasters, increase improvements and scan the environment for the newest products and trends in the market.

Big Data has a major impact on the management processes including distributed process planning and supply management, they also apply in the manufacturing business for mechanical assembling, production safety management and operational performance improvements.

Big Data plays a crucial role in research and development, human resource management, company performance management and decision making. The accuracy and complexity of economic models have been improved by big data.

Nowadays there is a number of ethical issues with Big Data, these issues arise due to lack of laws governing the usage of new forms of data.  As computers have developed and allows users new features and new ways for data gathering.

When it comes to privacy issues that affect individuals and groups the main issue is that our lives are becoming more digitally reflected and recorded to the extent that every action is connected and documented by an IP address. These recordings are used by companies and private firms to gather information about particular individuals after which the same individuals are analysed. These informational profiles are used to generate personalized ads. Businesses can also use big data to create advertising campaigns that can either encourage or discourage certain behaviours.  

From doing research around big data, I have noticed that every move a user makes it can be tracked by another, due to the volume of data being generated and gathered.  

Chat Soon,

Katie :)