Big Data

Conclusion

At the end of this investigation into the discourses and practices of big data analysis, we have uncovered a methodological paradigm in which future projects for the exploitation of digital footprints can be inscribed. This paradigm governs how an epistemic value is assigned to data, but also how to construct and manipulate corpora, how to interpret the results of the computation, how to render the investigation in such a way as to make it intelligible to a reader or user and how to determine the validity of the knowledge produced. It highlights the crucial nature of the notion of decision that governs the entire process and the link between knowledge and action. Two components are also essential to the integration of this paradigm: the role of craftsmanship in the constitution of data, their preparation, cleaning and analysis, and that of the rhetoric of image and narrative, which is crucial to bringing about and making intelligible the meaning of the data. For this, several key concepts are proposed:

– the distinction between data and footprint makes the latter always an intermediate and indirect sign of the targeted reality, whose meaning is to be constructed in the situation by extracting a corpus. The epistemic value of the numerical footprint is the result of a construction within an evidential paradigm;

– the distinction between field-based and corpus-based disciplines refines for a second time the integration of these practices in the cultural sciences. It ...