Editor’s Note

Abstract

The application of big data in law, social and political sciences is still in its infancy. However big data analysis is not anymore a fancy thing, but has reached all social science disciplines. Despite the fact that governments, social media and private digital data sources have begun to produce huge amounts of accessible data, interpretation and analysis of these data streams still constitutes a technical and functional challenge. And even in the neighboring fields of economics, econometrics and finance – disciplines longer accustomed to huge amounts of real-time data for example in stock market analysis – the applications of big data frameworks for huge-n and automatically generated information are still considered uncommon and innovative. Regarding most research questions in all of these fields either a suitable and structured data foundation or a researcher equipped with profound knowledge and suitable skills for big data analysis is missing. Statistics, Politics and Policy called for outstanding contributions related to Big Data Analysis. The principle aim is to promote research in this specific domain of data research. By selecting and subsequently publishing the following contributions we intent to demonstrate the potential and the adaptability of big data research for all involved disciplines and share interesting new possibilities to apply these techniques with the scientific community. The first contribution of our segment on big data is concerned with a big data framework in education, laying the theoretical foundations for the use of big data in educational settings. The second contribution is presenting a new, semi-automated approach in retrieving Twitter information. The third paper is concerned with textual data analysis based on parliamentary oversight hearings. The forth contribution is concerned with the language of dissenting opinion in Supreme Court cases. All contributions advance the usage and accessibility of automated data research in the concerning fields and improve our understanding of the related research questions. After our special segment on big data we decided to further include two contributions related to the political subfields of voting and policy in the current