Recently, The Guardian published an article about the declining ability of statistics to accurately represent the world. Private companies are taking over and controlling big data – and putting democracy in peril. Written by William Davies, this long read looks at data use in the past and how we've come to a crisis in statistics. 

The first excerpt from the article: 

In theory, statistics should help settle arguments. They ought to provide stable reference points that everyone – no matter what their politics – can agree on. Yet in recent years, divergent levels of trust in statistics has become one of the key schisms that have opened up in western liberal democracies. Shortly before the November presidential election, a study in the US discovered that 68% of Trump supporters distrusted the economic data published by the federal government. In the UK, a research project by Cambridge University and YouGov looking at conspiracy theories discovered that 55% of the population believes that the government “is hiding the truth about the number of immigrants living here”.

Read the complete article here: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/19/crisis-of-statistics-big-data-democracy

For another look on big data, read The Data That Turned the World Upside Down by Hannes Grassegger and Mikael Krogerus. This article outlines the mechanisms for creating very precise psychometric profiles on users for direct political advertising, not only on social media and the internet, but assisting door-to-door canvassers (when they have address lists and phone numbers cross-referenced).

Read the complete article here: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/big-data-cambridge-analytica-brexit-trump