SciDevNet: In just a few years big data have affected industries and activities from marketing and advertising to intelligence gathering and law enforcement, stirring much excitement and scepticism. With policymaking increasingly looking like big datas next frontier, is this phenomenon what one expert, Andreas Weigend, is calling the new oil that needs to be refined poised to be a blessing or a curse for human development and social progress? [1,2]
Optimists are calling it a revolution that will...