Week 4 Reflections (KV)

Webster offers a comprehensive assessment of where media measures are in terms of their sophistication, effectiveness, and shortcomings. I was particularly interested in the section about Big Data.

We're producing so many footprints with each of our social media accounts every second. Though we may not be audiences of a particular product, singer/songwriter, filmmaker, it's relatively easy for them to look up who might be a potential audience for them and target those individuals or groups with seamless advertising.

Here's a simple example. I wanted to know more about an Instagram user, so I wrote a really simple Python script to download the latest 20 Instagram postings she made. This is what it looks like before I clean it up.

Now after I clean it up and put it in to a dataframe (csv file), I can convert the data in to something more manageable.

I'm able to see the location she posted from, how many people are liking and engaging with her posts, the created time, and also see what type of content she's creating. 

I think what's most fascinating about the Big Data explosion, is how much power it puts in the hands of anyone with even the most basic code skills. 

(If anyone wants to collaborate on a project in which we can collect data this way and do analysis on the information, I'm happy to chat)