Il rischio della datafrenia nell’analisi dei big data. Appunti a partire dal caso «Mafia capitale» [The risk of dataphrenia in the analysis of big data. Notes from the Case «mafia capitale»]

This paper begins with an analysis of the diffusion on Twitter of news on an investigation that led to the discovery of the criminal system called «Mafia capitale». It then shows how a strictly computational approach is unable to investigate the factors at play in a media phenomenon, which are halfway between the typical processes of mass communication and those of interpersonal communication. The paper argues that the analysis of Big Data opens significant opportunities for the social scientist, as long as the sociological imagination is maintained and does not fall into an approach dictated by quantophrenia, which we may now call dataphrenia.