Big Data Uses

Big Data Role in Obama Re-Election The volumes, rapid velocity and variation of data otherwise referred to as Big Data has been used in the electioneering process especially in terms of directing the trends of voter psychology and the subsequent voting patterns, a specific example being the Obama reelection process that took more of the internet direction than the traditional door-to-door approach in the campaigns.

This paper will hence expound on the way Big Data has been and can be used in the monitoring and manipulation of the internet users especially the voting block, how this data can be mishandled and the possibility of infringements into the privacy of the individuals whose data is online. It will also evaluate the possibility of having checks on the handling, storage and use of personal data that is online.

Literature review There have been varied uses of the Big data in the contemporary society where information interconnectivity is of essence and inevitable. In an interview, Christine Twiford, a pragmatic enterprise executive at T-Mobile indicated that the Big Data has been used in three main ways; discovery, decision making and persuasion (Hiner J., 2012). Discovery using the Big Data can be in all fields, from the science field to the business area where the already stored data can be used to discover the preference of the clients and their spending habits.

Again it can be used to discover how a given population views politics and what it takes to change their minds and effectively manipulating the populace. Decision making using the information in the Big Data can as well be effected in voter understanding and changing campaign tact and wining more votes.

The Big Data can and has been a source of great political persuasion where the displayed numbers are used by analysis to shape the political persuasions of people with the greater number of people who agree with a given ideology or person having the likelihood of persuading the others to join them, by the sheer numbers obtained from the Big Data banks.

In the future, the Big Data will be used to know the levels of satisfaction that a given geographical area has with a particular political candidate, these will be obtained from sources such as the hedonometer which is used to map out happiness in cities and towns, and will also be used in the future to tell, almost to the letter, how popular particular candidates are in given regions by looking up how many times the name of those candidates appear.

In the same breath, it will be possible to know the behavior of a given region through the Big data analysis (Wakefield J., 2013). However, the use of personal data that is found online, with or without (though largely without permission) has been and will continue causing a lot of discomfort especially over the concern of infringement into privacy and confidentiality of the internet users. The levels of comfort with the use of the big data have however been on the declined and sharply criticized.

This has been on the concern over identity theft/fraud and data breaches. There have also been issues of transparency in the presentation of the data especially in political uses where some analysts have opined that some campaign teams will go to the extent of falsifying the data they present to the population with subjective aims (Lenard T. & Rubin P., 2013). Conclusion The Big data idea is a noble concept and has ben a product of the evolution in the information technology.