Google Flu Trends and the Methodological Shift from ‘Supply’ to ‘Demand’
In June this year (2014), transcript published an edited volume on “Big Data“. I contributed a chapter to this publication, on a topic which fascinates me: data obtained through search engine queries – and hence based on the digital traces which users leave behind. While I have looked into this topic more generally with regards to Google Trends before, this paper analyses Google Flu Trends and the connection between Big Data and epidemiological surveillance more specifically. The paper is in German, but I recently discussed the topic with Max Haiven and Anna Sauerbrey at the SLOW Politics conference in Berlin. Below you can find a summary of the paper and a video of our discussion.