From Digital Positivism and Administrative Big Data Analytics towards Critical Digital and Social Media Research!

Authors

  • Author

  • Christian Fuchs جامعة وستمنستر، المملكة المتحدة

  • Translator

  • Mohammed Hemchi

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.31430/LRGL5901

Keywords:

Administrative Research, Big Data Analytics, Computational Social Science, Critical Social Media Research, Critical Theory, Digital Positivism, SocialMedia

Abstract

​​This essay argues for a paradigm shift in the study of the Internet and digital/social media. Big data analytics is the dominant paradigm. It receives large amounts of funding, is administrative and a form of digital positivism. Critical social media research is an alternative approach that combines critical social media theory, critical digital methods and critical-realist social media research ethics. Strengthening the second approach is a material question of power in academia.

Author Biographies

  • Christian Fuchs, جامعة وستمنستر، المملكة المتحدة
    جامعة وستمنستر، المملكة المتحدة.
  • Mohammed Hemchi
    باحث، المركز العربي للأبحاث ودراسة السياسات، وأستاذ مساعد في معهد الدوحة للدراسات العليا.

References

  1. Tim O'Reilly, "Web 2.0: Compact Definition," O'Reilly Radar (2005), accessed on 4/5/2025, at: https://acr.ps/1L9BP19; Tim O'Reilly, "What Is Web 2.0," O'Reilly Media (2005), accessed on 4/5/2025, at: https://acr.ps/1L9BPV2
  2. Tim O'Reilly, "What Is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software," O'Reilly Media (2025), accessed on 4/5/2025, at: https://acr.ps/1L9BPV2
  3. Tim O'Reilly & John Battelle, Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On (O'Reilly Media, 2010), accessed on 4/5/2025, at: https://acr.ps/1L9BP3i
  4. المصدر من.alexa.com:
  5. Steve Schaefer, “The World's Largest Companies 2016,” Forbes , 25/5/2016, accessed on 4/5/2025, at: https://acr.ps/1L9BPtm
  6. Christian Fuchs, "The Dialectic: Not Just the Absolute Recoil, but the World's Living Fire That Extinguishes and Kindles Itself. Reflections on Slavoj Žižek's Version of Dialectical Philosophy, "Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism," TripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique , vol. 12, no. 2 (2014), pp. 848–875.
  7. Christian Fuchs, OccupyMedia! The Occupy Movement and Social Media in Crisis Capitalism (Winchester: Zero Books, 2014), pp. 73, 79.
  8. Christian Fuchs, Social Media: A Critical Introduction (London: SAGE, 2014).
  9. Ta-Qing Peng et al., "Mapping the Landscape of Internet Studies: Text Mining of Social Science Journal Articles 2000–2009," New Media & Society , vol. 15, no. 5 (2013), pp. 644–664.
  10. Ronald E. Rice & Richard P. Fuller, "Theoretical Perspectives in the Study of Communication and the Internet," in: William H. Dutton (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Internet Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 353–377.
  11. Lev Manovich, "Cultural Analytics: Visualizing Cultural Patterns in the Era of 'More Media'" (2009), accessed on 4/5/2025, at: https://acr.ps/1L9BOSK
  12. Software Studies Initiative (Cultural Analytics Lab), Lab.softwarestudies.com , accessed on 4/5/2025, at: http://lab.softwarestudies.com
  13. Tim Berners-Lee et al., "A Framework for Web Science," Foundations and Trends in Web Science , vol. 1, no. 1 (2006), pp. 1–130.
  14. Melissa Terras, Julianne Nyhan & Edward Vanhoutte (eds.), Defining Digital Humanities: A Reader (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2013).
  15. Cardiff University, Collaborative Online Social Media Observatory (COSMOS), "Ethics Resource Guide," accessed on 4/5/2025, at: https://acr.ps/1L9BOUN
  16. Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), "Big Data," Digital Transformations in the Arts and Humanities Theme, accessed on 4/5/2025, at: https://acr.ps/1L9BPFQ
  17. National Endowment for Humanities , accessed on 4/5/2025, at: https://acr.ps/1L9BPHD
  18. Paul F. Lazarsfeld, "Administrative and critical communications research," in: J. Durham Peters (ed.), Mass Communication and American Social Thought: Key Texts, 1919–1968 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield,
  19. Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interest (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), p. 5.
  20. Vincent Mosco, To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2014); Vincent Mosco, "Marx in the Cloud," in: Christian Fuchs & Vincent Mosco (eds.), Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016), pp. 516–535.
  21. Vincent Mosco, To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2014), p. 193.
  22. للاطلاع على قائمة بأمثلة على هذه التعريفات، ينظر الفصل الثاني من: Christian Fuchs, Social Media: A Critical Introduction , 2 nd ed. (London: SAGE, 2017).
  23. Christian Fuchs, Internet and Society: Social Theory in the Information Age (New York: Routledge, 2008); Christian Fuchs, Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies (London: Routledge, 2011); Christian Fuchs, Digital Labour and Karl Marx (New York: Routledge, 2014); Christian Fuchs, Social Media: A Critical Introduction (London: SAGE, 2014); Christian Fuchs, Culture and Economy in the Age of Social Media (New York: Routledge, 2015); Christian Fuchs, Critical Theory of Communication: New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet (London: University of Westminster Press, 2016).
  24. Christian Fuchs, Reading Marx in the Information Age: A Media and Communication Studies Perspective on "Capital Volume I" (New York: Routledge, 2016); Christian Fuchs & Vincent Mosco (eds.), Marx and the Political Economy of the Media (Studies in Critical Social Sciences, vol. 79 (Leiden: Brill, 2016); Christian Fuchs & Vincent Mosco (eds.), Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism (Studies in Critical Social Sciences, vol. 80 (Leiden: Brill, 2016).
  25. Christian Fuchs, Social Media: A Critical Introduction (London: SAGE,
  26. Christian Fuchs, "Towards Marxian Internet Studies," Triple C: Communication, Capitalism & Critique , vol. 10, no. 2 (2012), pp. 392–412.
  27. Karl Marx, Capital: vol. I (London: Penguin Books, 1867), p. 125; ينظر الترجمة العربية: كارل ماركس، رأس المال: نقد الاقتصاد السياسي، مج 1، ترجمة فهد كم نقش (موسكو: دار التقدم، 1985)، ص 53. (المترجم)
  28. Christian Fuchs, Digital Labour and Karl Marx (New York: Routledge, 2014); Christian Fuchs, Culture and Economy in the Age of Social Media (New York: Routledge, 2015).
  29. Fuchs, Culture and Economy in the Age of Social Media.
  30. منظمة غير ربحية تتولى تسيير مشاركة الإبداع والمعرفة ضمن أطر قانونية مفتوحة، وتعتمد نظام تراخيص يتيح للمبدعين مشاركة أعمالهم بحرية ضمن شروط محددة، مثل نسب العمل إلى صاحبه، أو منع الاستخدام التجاري، أو السماح بالتعديل؛ وهو يعدّ بديلًا أشد مرونة من نظام حقوق النشر التقليدي Copyright، ويهدف إلى تعزيز الولوج المفتوح للمعرفة المشتركة. (المترجم)
  31. Christian Fuchs, "Left-Wing Media Politics and the Advertising Tax: Reflections on Astra Taylor's Book The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age," TripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique , vol. 13, no. 1 (2015), pp. 1–4.
  32. Deborah Lupton, Digital Sociology (London: Routledge, 2015), p. 15.
  33. Richard Rogers, Digital Methods (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2013).
  34. Miriyam Aouragh, "Social Media, Mediation and the Arab Revolutions," in: Christian Fuchs & Vincent Mosco (eds.), Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 482–515; Paolo Gerbaudo, Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism (London: Pluto Press, 2012).
  35. Christian Fuchs, OccupyMedia! The Occupy Movement and Social Media in Crisis Capitalism (Winchester: Zero Books, 2014).
  36. للمزيد عن هذه الأدوات، ينظر: " Social Media Data Wiki," Wikidot (website), accessed on 4/5/2025, at: http://socialmediadata.wikidot.com; Digital Methods Initiative, "Tool Database (DMI Tool Archive)," Digital Methods Initiative Wiki , accessed on 4/5/2025, at: https://acr.ps/1L9BP15
  37. Majid KhosraviNik, "Critical Discourse Analysis, Power, and New Media Discourse," in: Magdalena Kopytowska & Yohannes Kalyango (eds.), Why Discourse Matters: Negotiating Identity in the Mediatized World (New York: Peter Lang, 2013), pp. 287–306.
  38. Martin Reisigl & Ruth Wodak , Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 39.
  39. Norman Fairclough, Language and Power , 3 rd ed. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015).
  40. ينظر الفصل الثامن في: Christian Fuchs, Culture and Economy in the Age of Social Media (New York: Routledge, 2015).
  41. British Sociological Association, Statement of Ethical Practice (Durham, UK: British Sociological Association, 2002).
  42. Michael Zimmer & Nicholas J. Proferes, "A Topology of Twitter Research: Disciplines, Methods, and Ethics," Aslib Journal of Information Management , vol. 66, no. 3 (2014), pp. 250–261.
  43. Luke Townsend & Claire Wallace, Social Media Research: A Guide to Ethics (Aberdeen: University of Aberdeen, 2016).
  44. Helen Nissenbaum, Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010).
  45. British Psychological Society, Code of Ethics and Conduct (Leicester: British Psychological Society, 2009), p.13.
  46. المقصود الحملة التي سبقت الاستفتاء على مغادرة بريطانيا الاتحاد الأوروبي في عام 2016. (المترجم)
  47. Roy Bhaskar, Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom (London: Routledge, 2008), p. 242.

Downloads

PDF (Hosted in Arabic)
HTML (Arabic)

Published

2025-07-01

Usage statistics

43 views 55 downloads

Issue

Vol. 13 No. 075 (2025): Issue 075

Section

Translated Studies

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Christian Fuchs (Author)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.