Home made big data? Challenges and opportunities for participatory social research

Why should big data be the purview of only national governments, corporations, and (sometimes) academics? Many Web communications and other electronic traces are made by people as part of their everyday lives, and many of these same producers of big data have questions they want to answer about their own lives. This paper suggests some ways of thinking about big data in the context of questions people are trying to answer for themselves and their communities. It then takes an initial glance at conversations on Reddit to see how users draw on evidence, and concludes by arguing that there is space for home-made big data.