Big Data & Feminist Critique
This phrase describes the illusion that data and GIS are neutral and detached from power.
What is the “view from nowhere”?
This term describes the belief that massive datasets are always more "objective" or "true" than personal stories
What is the mythos of Big Data?
This scholar argued that GIS can be re-envisioned through feminist epistemology.
(HINT: it's one of the authors of our readings!)
Who is Mei-Po Kwan?
These three characteristics are often used to define “big data.” Name two.
What are volume, velocity, and variety?
Quantitative research often uses this "binary" to suggest that if data isn't "Big," it isn't useful for large arguments.
What is the Big-Small data binary?
This key feminist concept requires researchers to reflect on how their own identity, position, and power shape the data they produce
What is reflexivity?
This Brooklyn-based archive preserves lesbian history and challenges the big/small data hierarchy.
What is the Lesbian Herstory Archives?
These types of methods (like counting plus interviewing) are used to balance out the weaknesses of only using numbers.
What are mixed methods?
This concept argues that all knowledge is shaped by perspective and positionality.
What is situated knowledge?
According to Gieseking, this binary gives authority to large-scale datasets while dismissing community-based knowledge.
What is the big data vs. small data binary?
This 19th-century "ism" is the idea that only scientific, measurable data counts as real knowledge.
What is positivism?
Kwan links daily movements and lived experiences to broader spatial systems using this mapping approach.
What is space-time or trajectory mapping?
This survival strategy involves deliberately not producing or sharing data to resist surveillance or erasure.
What is protective silence?
This concept describes how "Big Data" creates a false standard that marginalized groups can never meet.
What is a false norm?
Feminist GIS challenges this idea that visualization is inherently neutral or apolitical.
What is the assumption of objectivity in mapping?