Chapter 1: Big data and Decision-making: How Big Data Is Relevant Across Fields and Domains Available to Purchase

Big data is a buzzword of our times, and yet the awareness of what big data is, how it permeates our daily lives, and how it is applied either in the policy-making process or in the business sector remains relatively low. From a different perspective, while specialists, that is, practitioners and researchers, dealing with the technical facets of big data successfully uncover new features, new domains, and new opportunities related to big data, there is a need of evaluating and examining these findings through the lens of social sciences and management. This chapter offers an insight into key issues and developments that shape the broad and multi-directional big data debate. To this end, the content of the book is elaborated and the key findings are highlighted. In this way, this chapter serves as a very useful guide into the question of how big data is applied across issues and domains and how it is valid and relevant to all of us today.