What is Digital Trace Data?

Chris Bail
Duke University

Website: https://www.chrisbail.net
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chris_bail
Github: https://github.com/cbail

We Have Finally Found our Telescope!

 

[J]ust as the invention of the telescope revolutionized the study of the heavens, so too by rendering the unmeasurable measurable, the technological revolution in mobile, Web, and Internet communications has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of ourselves and how we interact … . [T]hree hundred years after Alexander Pope argued that the proper study of mankind should lie not in the heavens but in ourselves, we have finally found our telescope. Let the revolution begin.

—Duncan Watts (2011, p. 266)

Digital Footprints


From Eagle et al. (2010)

The Globalization of Culture


From Bail et al. (2019)

Mapping Social Distancing

From Safegraph

large, digital datasets, that describe human behavior

(e.g social media sites, internet search data, blogs, administrative records, historical archives, audio-visual, or geospatial data)

Custom-Made vs. Ready-Made Data

Custom-Made Data

Ready-Made Data


From Eagle et al. (2010)

Ready-Made Data

Strength or Weakness?