Ethical Reasoning in Big Data

This volume gathers seminal contributions that identify the boundaries of the various ethical dilemmas that have emerged in the field of big data research and proposes a set of guidelines for solving or preventing these dilemmas. The book discusses data collection and handling, theoretical and practical definitions of privacy, human and social costs of big data collection and analysis, the economic impact of ethical costs, political dimensions of big data ethics, ethical and unethical behavior in commercial utilization of big data. Of particular interest are new methodologies for handling and framing the use of big data repositories. Equally important are contributions that reveal the factors which may impact fundamental definitions of ethical use and abuse of big data use. While the first section of the book focuses on the social and theoretical roots of ethical reasoning, the second section proposes guidelines or heuristic principles for activities related to the ethical collecting, processing, analyzing, and disseminating results, processes, or tools related to big data projects. The guidelines and principles can shape future research, the design of new practices, tool development, commercial, political, or administrative use of big data. The book aims to reach a broad audience, of educators, researchers, and practitioners. Educators can use the volume in courses related to big data handling and processing. Researchers can use it for designing new methods of collecting, processing, and disseminating big data, raw or in the form of analysis results. Finally, practitioners can use it to steer future tools or procedures for handling big data. As this is an area of great interest, yet largely undeveloped, we anticipate that the volume will attract significant interest filling in an obvious gap.