Big Data-Driven Health Surveillance [chapter]

2018 The Big Data Agenda: Data Ethics and Critical Data Studies  
The emergence of research using big data for public health surveillance is directly related to the vast, diverse data generated by individuals online. On Twitter, many users publicly post about their medical conditions, medication and habits related to self-care. By 'liking' content, Facebook users indicate their eating habits or physical (in-)activity. It is common to search the internet for information on experienced or observed diseases and symptoms. Some users sign up for online communities
more » ... to exchange their personal knowledge of and struggles with illness, and some even track their physical movements and physiological signals with wearable fitness devices. Such data have come to play a role in research on public health surveillance. When drawing on such data, especially when applying for funding and when publishing results, researchers articulate ethical arguments and validity claims contending the normative rightness of their approaches. Some of these claims will be examined in the following chapter, with specific regards to research on big data-driven public health surveillance. Important trends in this field are approaches monitoring social media, search behaviour and information access. As an alternative to mining data without users' consent, possibilities of health prosumption and participatory epidemiology are being explored. Social media monitoring as contribution to public health surveillance. On social networking sites such as Facebook or microblogging platforms like Twitter, users post and interact with potentially health-relevant information. They may, for example, casually post about their health conditions or indicate interests and (e.g. dietary or sexual) habits which may be health-related. This sharing of information facilitates research drawing on social media data collected by tech corporations. Such research may be conducted by scientists employed at universities and (inter-)governmental institutes, and potentially in collaboration with employees of tech corporations.
doi:10.16997/book14.e fatcat:uxytanw5bzhlbeldzgphcj6zjm