Original Research Article

Inflated granularity: Spatial Big Data

and geodemographics

Big Data & Society

JulyDecember 2015: 115
! The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/2053951715601144
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Craig M Dalton1 and Jim Thatcher2

Abstract
Data analytics, particularly the current rhetoric around Big Data, tend to be presented as new and innovative, emerging
ahistorically to revolutionize modern life. In this article, we situate one branch of Big Data analytics, spatial Big Data,
through a historical predecessor, geodemographic analysis, to help develop a critical approach to current data analytics.
Spatial Big Data promises an epistemic break in marketing, a leap from targeting geodemographic areas to targeting
individuals. Yet it inherits characteristics and problems from geodemographics, including a justification through the
market, and a process of commodification through the black-boxing of technology. As researchers develop sustained
critiques of data analytics and its effects on everyday life, we must so with a grounding in the cultural and historical
contexts from which data technologies emerged. This article and others (Barnes and Wilson, 2014) develop a historically
situated, critical approach to spatial Big Data. This history illustrates connections to the critical issues of surveillance,
redlining, and the production of consumer subjects and geographies. The shared histories and structural logics of spatial
Big Data and geodemographics create the space for a continued critique of data analyses role in society.
Keywords
Big Data, geodemographics, data science, data analytics, black box, critical data studies

Dear current resident,

Congratulations! Youve been pre-approved for our
special oer . . .

Some marketing rm thinks that I or at least a current

resident of my neighborhood is a good (but not great)
credit risk. I toss the junk mail onto a growing pile and
move on to a more important task: dinner. With many
restaurants closed on Monday, I turn to my smartphone to look for ones that are open. Based on my
location, past searches, and other information, a targeted ad pops up for a new Indian restaurant a block
away. Its an easy choice. Using spatial Big Data,
the advertising successfully triggered a craving for
rogan josh.
On paper, delivered to every mailbox on my street,
the credit promotion feels worlds away from the advertisements for restaurants and clothing brands on my
smartphone, targeted at me using location-indexed
Big Data.1 The geographical Big Data targeting of

ads on my phone may seem new and exceptional, but

it has precursors, including neighborhood geodemographic targeting like the credit oer. Current technical
denitions of Big Data tend toward data that pushes
existing technology to its limits in three ways: volume,
velocity, and variety (Horvath, 2012; Laney, 2001).
Such data forces us to look beyond the tried-andtrue methods that are prevalent at that time (Jacobs,
2009: 44), to a mythological belief that large data sets
oer a higher form of intelligence and knowledge
(Boyd and Crawford, 2012: 663). In a general sense,
spatial Big Data is Big Data that incorporates digital
1
Department of Global Studies and Geography, Hofstra University,
Hempstead, NY, USA
2
Department of Urban Studies, The University of Washington, Tacoma,
WA, USA

Corresponding author:
Craig M Dalton, Department of Global Studies and Geography, Hofstra
University, Hempstead, NY 11549, USA.
Email: craig.m.dalton@hofstra.edu

Creative Commons CC-BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial
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of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.
sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
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Big Data & Society

location information. Currently, the majority of spatial

Big Data is generated through the use of location-based
services found on mobile devices (Laurila et al., 2012).
It is highly valued for providing rich information
about the lives of individual end-users, such as my location and penchant for South Asian food (Long et al.,
2012) and sits at the intersection of people, places, and
technology (Evans, 2013: 3).
Despite the concerns over Big Datas inuence on
society raised by critical scholars (Boyd and
Crawford, 2012; Crampton et al., 2013; Dalton and
Thatcher, 2014; Wilson, 2012), for many [T]he big
ethical issue . . . is that nobody thinks this is an ethical
issue (Paul, 2013). Despite a literature that stretches
back to at least 1997 (Cox and Ellsworth, 1997), Big
Data advocates and practitioners can avoid ethical and
social considerations by framing the eld as perpetually
new and innovative, thus legitimizing itself as natural
and inevitable (Leszczynski, 2014; Puschmann and
Burgess, 2014).
We undermine this ahistorical myth by contextualizing spatial Big Data, charting a recent history through
a conuence of geographic, capitalist, and technological interests and impetuses. Spatial Big Data did
not emerge from a vacuum, but presenting it that way
helps attract signicant capital investment. Such an
ahistorical approach facilitates a simplistic and selfinterested recounting of spatial knowledge that
obscures the asymmetric relations of power and prot
it produces. In particular, we build on recent critical
work on the geoweb2 and neo-geography (Barnes and
Wilson, 2014; Kingsbury and Jones, 2009; Leszczynski,
2014; Wilson, 2012), and older critical Geographic
Information Systems (GIS) work on geodemographics
(Goss, 1995a; Phillips and Curry, 2003; Graham, 2005),
to begin to develop a historically grounded critical data
studies approach (Dalton and Thatcher, 2014).
Spatial Big Data is big business. Consumers bought
approximately 1.3 billon location-aware smartphones
in 2014 alone, each of which collects loads of personal
data including location, purchases, status updates,
social media connections, calendars, calls, webbrowsing, etc. (Arthur, 2014). Companies that collect
and process large consumer datasets with a geographic
component are increasingly valuable.3 According to
BIA/Kelsey senior analyst Michael Boland, locationaware applications oer the holy grail of advertising:
to be able to tell if any given ad resulted in the targeted
consumer going to the advertisers store (Peterson,
2013). Location data is a hot commodity (Prott,
mobile technology expert, quoted in McBride and
Oreskovic, 2013) as it, and the companies built
around its creation, analysis, and control, are valued
for the targeted advertising opportunities that their
data makes possible.

Spatial Big Data isnt just business, its big science

as well. Universities are forming partnerships with private industry and government agencies to develop algorithms for analyzing big spatial datasets. Graphics
computer chip manufacturer NVIDIA recently
launched the NVIDIA CUDA Center of Excellence
Program, which recognizes, rewards, and fosters collaborations with research institutions such as UNCCharlottes Center for Applied GIScience (NVIDIA
Corporation, 2014a, 2014b). As Kitchin (2014b) suggests with Big Data in general, spatial Big Data is
reshaping science (Goodchild, 2013; Gorman, 2013)
and society as marketers (Ratner, 2004), urban planners
(Townsend,
2013),
political
analysts
(Ansolabehere and Hersh, 2012), and national security
agencies (Crampton et al., 2014) use it to understand,
model, and attempt to shape the world.
Such initiatives are administratively valorized and
well-funded, but often give little consideration to the
broader impacts of Big Data science. In this article,
we contextualize recent spatial Big Data developments
within the longer history of geographically targeted
marketing. Historically situating spatial Big Data
opens a possibility to learn from existing critical
approaches and to develop new ones with the promise
of better informed research, critique, and resistance
involving Big Data. To that end, the article proceeds
in three sections: First, we detail how both geodemographic and spatial Big Data analyses attempt to quantify social identity, though spatial Big Data promises an
epistemic break by focusing on an individual person,
not a geodemographic area. Second, the shared history
illustrates three shared logics that shape how spatial Big
Data emerges from the milieu of geodemographic marketing: their market orientation, technological blackboxing, and the promises of ever more ne, ever more
relevant analysis. Third, with that foundation, we present approaches to geodemographics, both applied and
theoretically oriented, to better understand spatial Big
Data. Together, these sections situate spatial Big Data
in terms of the past, highlighting its underlying structural logics, issues, and limits.

All in the family: Geodemographics and

Big Datas shared foundations
Data is getting big(ger) (Farmer and Pozdnoukhov,
2012). As data storage capacity gets larger and computation faster, the exact technical composition of big
has endured a relentless march from kilo to mega to
giga to tera to peta to exa to zetta to yotta and beyond
(Doctorow, 2008). For this reason, while there exist a
myriad of denitions of Big Data (c.f. Kitchin and
Lauriault, 2014; Laney, 2001; Manyika et al., 2011;
Mayer-Schonberger and Cukier, 2013, etc; for a general

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Dalton and Thatcher

review of 12 denitions see Press, 2014) most emphasize

data that stress existing technology, often in terms of
three Vs: data volume, velocity, and variety
(Horvath, 2012; Laney, 2001). At the same time, Big
Data promises more than simply large data sets. For its
boosters, it has created a breathtaking time in science
(Frankel and Reid, 2008: 30), in which the enterprise
become[s] a full-time laboratory (Bughin et al., 2010).
In a recent webinar, HP CEO Meg Whitman suggested
that Big Data is going to quite literally transform
everything (Whitman and Youngjohns, 2014). As
recent critical scholarship shows, such views are
modern myths (Boyd and Crawford, 2012) with their
own set of epistemological commitments (Thatcher,
2014). Even as few practitioners focus on the ethics of
spatial Big Data (Paul, 2013), popular (Marcus and
Davis, 2014), academic (Kitchin, 2014a), and state
(Executive Oce of the President, 2014) sources are
beginning to question both the ecacy and morality
of Big Data. These critiques begin to explore how
data are always expressions of power (Wilson, 2014a)
that are never ontologically prior to their interpretation
(Boellstor, 2013). Spatial Big Data has forerunners in
other modern attempts to represent, model, and ultimately produce social geographies of consumption.
Situating its preconditions in terms of a history of geodemographics makes clear the shared structural logics,
criticisms, and resulting basis for a promised epistemic
break in spatial Big Data.
Proponents of geodemographics dene it as the
analysis of socio-economic and behavioral data about
people, to investigate the geographical patterns that
structure and are structured by the forms and functions
of settlements (Harris et al., 2005: 225) or simply the
analysis of people by where they live (Sleight, 1997:
6). It can involve a range of topics including policing or
urban planning, but in practice, geodemographics is
chiey dedicated to consumer proling and opinion
polling based on residency (Burrows and Gane, 2006;
Longley, 2005; Sleight, 1997). To develop a new geodemographic system, experts identify a number of statistical socio-economic clusters (proles) based on dozens
of indicators from demographic and/or consumer datasets. Similar clusters are lumped into labeled groups
which can range from the Upper Crust to Auent
Achievers to Thriving Greys to Hard-Pressed
Families to The Have-Nots (Batey and Brown,
1995: 94; Harris et al., 2005: 13). In practice, the geodemographic system uses a proprietary algorithm to
assign a cluster/group designation to each geographic
area, such as a postal code, in a study region. The
underlying geographic logic is that people tend to
reside near similar people, making for a socioeconomically homogeneous geographical unit. This is
typically expressed in the literature in terms of

deterministic cliches such as birds of a feather ock

together (Burrows and Gane, 2006; Flowerdew and
Leventhal, 1998; Harris et al., 2005; Longley, 2012;
Nelson and Wake, 2005) and You are where you
live (Burrows and Gane, 2006; Leslie, 1999; Mitchell
and McGoldrick, 1994; Phillips and Curry, 2003). Once
applied, the classication is a social prole for the
postal code, allowing companies and public agencies
to better allocate their resources geographically. For
example, a company selling luxury cars can focus
their advertising on postal codes identied as
Thriving Greys whereas sub-prime mortgage lenders
can market to postal codes identied as Hard-Pressed
Families.
Geodemographics practitioners point to their own
precursors in Charles Booths maps of poverty in
London in the 18801890s, the later Chicago School
of Sociology, and mid-century factorial ecology and
social area analysis (Harris et al., 2005; Singleton and
Spielman, 2014). Geodemographics began to develop as
a eld and thereafter as an industry in the mid-20th
century amidst geographys quantitative revolution.
Scholars, most notably William Warntz, developed
forms of spatial analysis based on social physics, a
monistic idea that social relations follow the laws of
physics, to analyze geographic areas using contemporary computers (Barnes and Wilson, 2014; Warntz,
1964). In the early 1960s, newly granular data in the
form of ZIP codes in the US and similar neighborhood
data in the UK allowed academic social researchers to
study areas comprising 15,000 people or less.
Researchers in both countries, including Jonathan
Robbins in the US and Richard Webber in the UK,
developed algorithms using that demographic data to
identify areas in need of public subsidies (Harris et al.,
2005).
Direct marketers quickly took notice of how these
methods could be used for targeted advertising. Both
Robbins and Webber entered the private sector as
geodemographics experts. Through the 1970s and
1980s, they and others built the geodemographic
powerhouse rms Claritas, CACI, and Demographics
Inc. (now Axciom). Analyses in the United Kingdom
often used general-purpose, open national classication
systems at ne geographic scales, whereas analyses in
the United States tended to be more topically
focused and closed, utilizing coarser spatial scales, but
more demographic clusters (proles) (Singleton and
Spielman, 2014).
Technologically, the implementation was the same.
This nascent geodemographics industry grew in
connection with contemporary developments of GIS.
Connecting tabular and spatial data in a GIS facilitates the spatial designation of geodemographic
proles to areas and subsequent geographic analysis.

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Big Data & Society

However, geodemographics had little connection with

academic geography research, a tendency apparent in
the small number of publications about geodemographics in academic geography journals, particularly
in the United States (Harris et al., 2005: 228, 241;
Openshaw, 1989; Singleton and Spielman, 2014). By
the early 1990s, the combination of unprecedented
computing power in GIS, growing market demand,
and readily available capital fed an explosion in the
geodemographics industry. Geodemographic services
included proles of existing customers to identify
those most likely to make more purchases, generating
new business through direct mail marketing, credit
scoring, analyzing media markets for advertisers,
survey design, and planning (Mitchell and
McGoldrick, 1994; Phillips and Curry, 2003).

The networked consumer

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, web-based companies
outside geodemographics, such as Overture, Yahoo!,
and Google, revolutionized targeted marketing.
Instead of classifying neighborhoods, they use nongeographic means such as users web searches and
web browsing histories to oer personalized batches
of advertisements (Battelle, 2005). As early as 2003, it
was clear to many of these technology rms that location held great potential for personalized marketing
(Dalton, 2013). In the mid-2000s, early Web 2.0
rms, such as Facebook and Twitter, applied this personalized approach using additional user-contributed
data such as status updates and tweets in conjunction
with location. Tech companies began acquiring or
developing geographical functions for their services by
adding location information to their consumer data
collection. These web-based location-linked services
became the basis for many of todays geoweb applications including Google Maps, Foursquare, Twitters
geographic services, and millions of secondary geoweb
applications (Hoetmer and Marks, 2013). At the same
time, rms that performed traditional geodemographic
analyses, such as Claritas, Epsilon and Acxiom, emulated the technology rms by oering individualized
consumer proles that involve spatial data (Kitchin,
2014b).
Critical scholars today describe spatial Big Data as
part of the shift in production, dissemination, and
institutionalization of spatial media (Leszczynski,
2014: 62) occurring as mobile applications move
from simply capturing consumption patterns to
attempting to actively shape them (Wilson, 2012). The
dierence is not in the intent, as shaping consumption
patterns has long been the goal of geodemographic
marketing (Goss, 1995a), but in the scale and methods
through which spatial Big Data functions.

Both processes are market driven and demand a correspondence between the dispositions, attitudes, and
socioeconomic characteristics of a signicant majority
of the data subjects and the classication itself in order
to generate value (Uprichard et al., 2009: 2827).
However, geodemographics uses the neighborhood or
postal code, an area, as the unit of measure, whereas
spatial Big Data promises the same outcomes at the
individual level.
Spatial Big Data commodies the individual. Ones
personal locations, dispositions, attitudes, and socioeconomic characteristics are the object of analysis,
rather than geographically located populations.
Industry hype promises this shift will create the
killer application of the 21st Century: individually
targeted location-specic ubiquitous advertising
(Krumm, 2011). Such applications use location data,
combined with other information, to serve advertisements. For example, if an application on my phone
knows that Im at Lowes, it could remind me that my
mothers birthday is coming up and suggest I purchase
some tomato plants for her garden. If the application
records me moving at jogging speed over long distances, it might advertise new running shoes or a gym
with a track in the winter. Mobile devices, enabled with
location-tracking, accelerometers, pedometers, and
even heart rate monitors, transform individual people
into both sensors of the surrounding world (Goodchild
and Li, 2012) and sensors of themselves. Wolf, Kelly,
and others in the Quantied Self movement engage this
shift on a personal level (Wolf, 2011). On a wider level,
those who purchase, analyze, and leverage this data
collect an individuals information to target ads at
that individual person, not families or people residing
in the same postal code. More ows of data, not only
from ones purchase history, but also from ones locations, speed, and even heart rate, facilitate more personalized targeting.
On a fundamental level, both geodemographics and
spatial Big Data assume that social identity can be
reduced to measurable characteristics that can be algorithmically classied. Furthermore, as with social physics, this assemblage of personal data is predictive, or
can be made to be so, commodifying it as valuable in
marketing and ultimately making a sale. While geodemographics and spatial Big Data are hardly alone on
this point, this commodication proceeds in specically
geographic ways. A neighborhoods assigned geodemographic class or an individuals assembled prole can
become a self-fullling prophecy as people respond to
advertising as consumers. Feedback loops may form in
which consumers are presented with options based on
available data. Their choices are then used by marketers to target subsequent advertisements, advancing
some options and limiting the consumers perceived

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Dalton and Thatcher

choices (Lohr, 2012a). In this way, geodemographics

and spatial Big Data do not merely represent or
target people, they produce social relations and geographic spaces of consumption (Burrows and Gane,
2006; Goss 1995a, 1995b; Zook and Graham, 2007).
Advertising, buying, and subsequently using running
shoes may lead a consumer to walk more often, contributing to demand for tracks in parks and more athletic shoe production. That consumer may also be
manipulated into spending too much of his/her
income on shoes. These processes are already ongoing
in everyday life; for example, the online dating
serviceMatch.com aggregates and analyzes a variety
of individual data points, including location, to determine who is romantically matched with whom (Lohr,
2012b). The stakes of both geodemographic and Big
Data analyses are not merely about data, they are
about who we are and how we live.

Shared traits: Markets, black boxes, and

epistemologies
Market orientation, market epistemology
Building from the shared foundational concept of a
measurable, malleable social geographic identity, both
geodemographics and spatial Big Data rely on exploratory correlations to arrive at analytical outcomes,
instead of more rigorous geographic or sociological
methods. As far back as the 1970s, Richard Webber
proposed that geodemographic classication was an
inductive approach for identifying new insights
(1975). In this regard, geodemographics is regarded
as a data exploration tool, not a statistical method of
hypothesis conrmation or rejection (Harris et al.,
2005: 15). Regardless of these limitations, geodemographic methods provide sucient grounds for corporate decision making.
[Geodemographics] has been used in the business sector
for 25 years now . . . and it is still here, stronger than
ever! Given the nature of business decisions, the cost of
using geodemographics would not be borne if the
technique could not prove its worth. (Harris et al.,
2005: 225)

The goal is not to understand geographic phenomena,

but to be able to eectively target consumers using geographic criteria.
Spatial Big Data is similarly market oriented.
Correlative algorithms identify people geographically
who are likely interested in a given product; explanation is not the point. At an extreme, this view argues
Who knows why people do what they do? The point is
they do it, and we can track and measure it with

unprecedented delity (Anderson, 2008). In this formulation, Google conquered the advertising world by
leveraging more and better data for prot without
concerning itself with explanation (Anderson, 2008).
Andersons end of theory argument has been criticized both by Big Data evangelists (Silver, quoted in
Marcus and Davis, 2014) and critics (Bollier and
Firestone, 2010). Though some scholars attempt to critically evaluate the epistemology of Big Data (Boyd and
Crawford, 2012; Burns and Thatcher, 2014; Dalton and
Thatcher, 2014; Miller and Goodchild, 2014), such
debates also contribute to the myth of its newness, serving a market function by building buzz around Big
Data as a business necessity, a must-have for competitive targeted advertising. The underlying market orientation, with its goals of predictive, actionable data over
austerely correct information, remains in both Big Data
and spatial Big Data.
The focus on data correlation for capital gain is
apparent in Facebooks recent deletion of fake
accounts and imposition of more stringent identication requirements for authentic personal accounts.
For Facebook, value is generated through a like economy whereby a single users social actions4 are
instantly turned into valuable consumer data and
enter multiple cycles of multiplication and exchange
(Gertlitz and Helmond, 2013). Facebook feared fake
likes from automated accounts, because they meant
that like data no longer correlated to reality, a gap
that could potentially cost the company revenue if
advertisers lost faith in the marketing value of likes
(Fung, 2014). Therefore, Facebook radically altered
who could participate and thus what data is created
under the impetus of its explicitly prot driven
orientation.
A similar impetus drove Foursquares recent reinvention as a geographically indexed place recommendation
service. With spatial Big Data, the use of mobile smartphones with GPS technology transformed physical
location and experience into a digital commodity that
may be bid for, bought, and sold (Thatcher, 2013).
Leveraging the data of their 45 million users,
Foursquare can build a cache of personal information
[the company] then uses it to provide [users] with suggestions on where to go in the future (Larson, 2014).
By knowing where users are and what they like,
Foursquare can sell ads targeted at the individual, as
represented by his/her data. Achieving the killer
app, Foursquare oers the possibility that when a
shopper goes to Best Buy, Samsung will be able to
send them an ad for its TVs (Frier, 2013). Building
the promise of a promise of prots, Foursquare
received a $41 million dollar loan (Cooper, 2007: 142)
and $50 million in additional investment (Delo, 2014)
to achieve this goal. As Foursquare moved more

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Big Data & Society

aggressively into spatial marketing, it expanded its ad

sales sta four-fold and allowed all of its registered
merchants to purchase location-targeted ads (Frier,
2013). Its prots have allegedly grown from $2 million
in 2012 to somewhere between $15 and $20 million in
2013 (Carr, 2013). While geodemographics operates on
a dierent geographical scale than Foursquare, they
share a correlative epistemology of accurate enough
to turn a prot.

Big black boxes

The most valuable assets of both IT companies like
Foursquare and geodemographics rms like Claritas
are their data and the algorithms that produce it.
Companies keep such data and algorithms as proprietary trade secrets, resulting in black boxes: an analytical technology dened by its inputs and outputs and
not on its internal complexity (Latour, 1999: 304). As
a result, scientic and technical work [to create that
technology] is made invisible by its own success
(Latour, 1999: 304). For both spatial Big Data and
geodemographics rms, black-boxing analytical algorithms and the resulting data is an act of privatization,
ensuring that outsiders cannot know in detail how geodemographic or spatial Big Data analytics work.
Privatization is a core means of the commodication
process (Castree, 2003) and is part of a framework
that allows geodemographic and spatial Big Data systems to accumulate capital. In practice, input data is
fed into a companys proprietary secret sauce, the
algorithms which process and then present the data
(Miller, 2009).
The commodication of the analytic process itself, of
digital information rather than physical good, creates a
monopoly on data output. This commodied, proprietary output data may then be used to target ads internally or to sell portions of it to other rms. Those who
buy ad services and data, but who do not know the
algorithms that go into its parsing, cannot know
the details of how it was created. However, following
the market epistemology, so long as it correlates well
enough to the real world, it holds value.
The high valuation of software and data in a market
context reinforces companies drive to classify their
analytical procedures and resulting data as secret intellectual property to protect their assets. After all, it is
much easier for a competitor to steal and replicate an
algorithm than an oil rig or silicon chip. Spatial Big
Data and geodemographics share the market orientation and resulting black-boxing of analysis. The exact
algorithms that rms such as Claritas used to classify
postal codes in the 1990s were closely guarded trade
secrets, just as all of the specic metrics and dataporn that Google considers of competitive signicance

that drive its core search algorithm, PageRank, is secret

today (Doctorow, 2008: 18).
The black-boxing of analytics and data for the accumulation of capital has profound eects on who has
access and thus what can be known through that process. The market orientation of both geodemographics
and spatial Big Data means that the accuracy of a companys output data are veried in competitive marketplaces, rather than more formal scientic or similar
scholarly verication processes. As a result, data is
good enough because it facilitates competitive
advantage. On a deeper level, Burgess and Bruns
(2012) show that the very structure of data, and how
it is accessed through networked streams of data,
shapes what can be known through said data. Outside
researchers may be unable to conduct research because
a data source is cut o for market reasons. For example, once a market developed for Twitters data services,
it ended its long-standing policy of making its data
stream open to researchers free of charge (Thatcher,
2014). Currently, its full, unsampled rehose stream
is open only to hand-picked researchers selected by
Twitter and its resale partner GNIP (GNIP, 2014)
and those who can aord to purchase the data.
Though rates uctuate, in August of 2014, DataSift5
was selling tweets from its rehose access at $0.10 per
1,000. At the current rate of approximately 500 million
tweets a day,6 purchasing a full, undiscounted index of
Twitter data from DataSift would cost roughly $50,000
a day. Blackboxed tweets hold market value, leaving
Twitter little incentive to share them with outside
analysts.
This market logic inhibits scientic work by preventing researchers from emulating an approach, much less
replicating its results (Longley, 2012). Conversations
about understanding how or to what standards the
knowledge is produced, much less built-in problems
or biases, are cut o by the trade secrets of production.
As a result, the commodied trade secrets of geodemographics and spatial Big Data conceal some of their
own analytical limits.7
One foundational limit remains clear: both the
market orientation and its resulting black-boxing
rest upon a belief in the quantication of representation. For geodemographics, this quantication
occurred at the level of an areal unit, while spatial
Big Data promises to go a step further, to fully represent an individualand allow for the market targeting
thereof.

From quantified space to the quantified individual

The ties between geodemographics and spatial Big
Data go beyond their market orientation and privatization of analyses and data. The structure and inherent

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Dalton and Thatcher

limits of geodemographics laid the epistemological

groundwork for spatial Big Data as it exists today.
Geodemographics demonstrated the market value of
geographically targeted advertising, but it suered
from two core epistemological uncertainties that undercut its promises: rst, the lack of diverse data sources
and second, the heterogeneity of human populations.
Spatial Big Data is the logical outcome of long-running
attempts to resolve these two built-in uncertainties of
geodemographics. It does so through the promise of
representing a fully measured, quantied, geolocated
individual, rather than the homogenized, quantied
areal units of geodemographics.
For decades, geodemographic analyses in the US
and Europe relied primarily on publically generated
data, chiey census data, but also voting records, housing registries, and other, similar sources (Batey and
Brown, 1995). Over that time, geodemographic experts
recognized populations to be increasingly diverse and
that people had increasingly selective tastes as consumers. Modeling heterogeneous tastes required additional data beyond the census and its categorical
limits (Longley and Harris, 1999; Phillips and Curry,
2003). Furthermore, relying on governmental data created a boom and bust cycle around governmental data
releases and subsequent geodemographic activity
(Mitchell and McGoldrick, 1994). As a commodied
product, geodemographic rms needed to produce a
continual stream of sales (Leys, 2001) that accurately
represented increasingly selective consumer tastes. To
meet this need, geodemographics needed to diversify its
data sources and produce continually relevant-looking
results. To this end, the 1990s saw geodemographic
rms increasingly turning to lifestyle data from consumer surveys, retail purchases, and credit records for
their analyses (Debenham et al., 2003; Longley and
Harris, 1999; Phillips and Curry, 2003). New data
sources involved additional analytical issues. Unlike a
census, lifestyle data necessarily represents an incomplete population. It also required other kinds of
quantication. As opposed to age or median family
income, these inputs involved criteria such as interests
in home baking or theatre from consumer surveys.
Practitioners quantied such interests in variables
based on standardized check box answers on the surveys (Longley and Harris, 1999; Phillips and Curry,
2003).
Beyond the push for more diverse, continually
accessible data sources, practitioners recognized epistemological problems with the areal units at the heart
of geodemographics. First, such areal units fall victim
to an ecological fallacy, an error of deduction that
involves deriving conclusions about individuals solely
on the basis of an analysis of group data (ODowd,
2003). Geodemographics ascribes common, quantied

characteristics to everyone in a given area, such as a

postal code, based on its analysis. Few areas are actually that socially homogeneous. This problem was
recognized as early as the 1890s by Charles Booth in
his attempts to map economic classes by city block in
London. His cartographic solution dened eight economic classes and represented a given street as a
pure- or mixed-class using seven dierent colors
(Booth, 1902; Harris et al., 2005). Booth was prescient
in recognizing the problem. However, his x, along
with later increasingly complex geodemographic
models, did not resolve the ecological fallacy that
haunted geodemographics for the next 120 years.
Second, geodemographic analyses are subject to the
modiable areal unit problem (MAUP). Since geodemographic areas are not naturally occurring, the geographic scale and boundaries between studied areas can
aect analytic results (Openshaw, 1984).
Geodemographics practitioners from the 1970s
through the early 2000s attempted to address these
problems with perpetually smaller geographic units.
Perceived accuracy was valuable for geodemographics
rms, and smaller units looked more accurate. In the
US:
They made their locational analysis more and more
precise in the desperate belief that at some level if
not 40,000 people then 1,000 people, and if not there,
well, then 40 people they could discover and resuscitate the ideal refuge of a like-minded group of neighbors. (Phillips and Curry, 2003: 144)

Pushing the limits of available data and computational

resources, geodemographics could not escape the ecological fallacy. Ultimately, only granularity at the individual level could produce a truly homogenous unit of
measure within the context of todays multitude of subcultural consumer niches, but it remained out of reach.
As early as 1989, Openshaw dreamed of modeling individualized consumer behaviors, but thought it was
impossible with contemporary resources (1989). There
was a market need for quantied, geographically individualized targeted marketing, but no technological
means to achieve it.
Spatial Big Data purports to resolve both of geodemographics core issues. It oers continuous streams of
diverse data generated at the individual level. While Big
Data often involves public data sources, like national
level censuses, it often also includes other, more granular consumer information such as credit card transactions, frequent customer programs, web-browsing
histories, and a variety of social media information
such as Facebook proles, Twitter accounts, and
Instagram feeds. For example, Foursquare recently
began using its data on users to target them across

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Big Data & Society

Table 1. Geodemographics and spatial Big Data.

Geodemographics

Spatial Big Data

Geographic scale

Postcode (subject to the ecological fallacy &

MAUP)

Individual

Epistemology

Market-based: "Given the nature of business

decisions, the cost of using geodemographics would not be borne if the technique could not prove its worth. (Harris
et al., 2005)

Market-based: "Better than

Google . . . better than Yelp." (Hern, 2014)

Analytics are blackboxed trade

secrets (unless open source)

Yes

Yes

platforms. Thus, a Foursquare user may see the same

advertisement from Foursquare on their phone and
Facebook on their computer (Delo, 2014). When used
for purposes akin to geodemographics, spatial Big Data
adds an additional layer of geo-located information
given o through the use of location-enabled devices,
such as smartphones, and traditional Internet Protocol
(IP)8 addresses. These range from an individuals
reported GPS location at a given time to their phone
maintaining contact with cell towers, to their recorded
locations at the times of their last 1000 tweets. By linking location information from multiple sources across
devices, as the case of Foursquare and Facebook makes
clear, companies have begun to utilize spatial Big Data
for marketing to individuals located in both time and
space.
In its totality, Big Data necessarily includes more
diverse discourses than geodemographics. For example,
Big Data includes the abductive research currently
being done on genes (ODriscoll et al., 2013) and the
information generated by the Large Hadron Collider
(Doctorow, 2008), both areas where geodemographics
has no purview. However, spatial Big Data, generated
through mobile device use and for the purpose of targeted advertising, shares foundational assumptions and
addresses long-running problems of geodemographics.
Ubiquitous, individualized advertising irons out the
ecological fallacy of geodemographics, while the continual stream of sensor and consumption information
given o by smartphone use solves geodemographics
boom-bust cycle of data relevancy. Both new companies, such as Foursquare and Twitter, and traditional
geodemographic powerhouses, such as Claritas and
Axciom, market their spatial Big Data services as new
and powerful. While the pitch of technological newness makes sales, it doesnt explain how spatial Big
Data works, its limits, or possible consequences.
Spatial Big Datas entanglement with geodemographics
illuminates the foundational logics of a market-based
epistemology, proprietary algorithms and data, and the

drive to geographic individualization (Table 1). Given

this shared ancestry, it also opens possible lines of criticism into spatial Big Data.

What can critical data studies learn

from geodemographics?
The parallels and connections between geodemographics and spatial Big Data begin to situate the
latter within its historical context. As these histories
of Big Data and its connections to social physics
(Barnes and Wilson, 2014) and geodemographics
emerge, its rhetoric of exceptionalism and newness is
diminished. Drawing concrete lines between the past
and present opens the door to a more rigorous, critical
analysis of not only what is, but what might be
(Horkheimer, 1995; Wilson, 2015). When spatial Big
Data is situated, earlier critical assessments of geodemographics provide useful points of reference. Building
from these earlier critiques, this nal section outlines
both practical and theoretical approaches to spatial
Big Data moving forward.

Practical approaches
The proponents of geodemographic analysis continue
to address its epistemological uncertainties through the
narrowing of concern to methodological issues. They
acknowledge the problem of the datas scale, discussed
above, noting concerns with the ecological fallacies of
data and the modiable aerial unit problem (Debenham
et al., 2003; Duckham et al., 2001). Nevertheless, such
foundational questions are set aside as geodemographic
systems relation to the real world and hence utility
remain judged by their competitiveness on the market
(Burrows and Gane, 2006; Harris et al., 2005). This can
have unforeseen consequences when, due to funding
cutbacks and neoliberalization of geographic government services (Burns, forthcoming; Leszczynski,
2012), commercial geodemographic systems, with

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Dalton and Thatcher

their inherent biases and gaps, are applied to public

sector issues, such as public housing and elderly care.
While scientists have raised concerns over Big Datas
methodological issues (Lazer et al., 2014), spatial Big
Data practitioners lean on market justications for
their products akin to their geodemographic brethren.
In the competitive market of multiple mobile applications, Foursquare sells itself as simply better than its
competitors, rather than absolutely correct. According
to their CEO, they are better than Google in a lot of
cases and better than Yelp almost always (Hern,
2014).
As scholars incorporate spatial Big Data into their
analyses, some have articulated other methodological
criticisms. First, blackboxing of methods continues to
create roadblocks for researchers. Full spatial big datasets can be dicult and costly to access, if they are
available at all. In addition, Big Data researchers outside key companies typically do not have access to the
core, proprietary algorithms that process and interpret
the data. Consequently, the limits of their analysis may
be shaped or inhibited in ways that may remain entirely
opaque to the researcher. Second, unlike total population data such as a census, geodemographic lifestyle
data tends to oer less than a complete population,
presenting issues of representation and bias in the
data around class, language, and use of technology.
Recent research has demonstrated that spatial Big
Data, like Yelp reviews, has blind spots akin to the
digital divide (Baginski et al., 2014). Furthermore, the
user-generated nature of many sources makes it extremely dicult and potentially impossible to assess the
veracity of such data, at the very least requiring new
techniques of quality assurance (Goodchild and Li,
2012). In a market context, such data suces, so long
as it is tied to prot generation, but it presents challenges for the practice of scholarly geographic analysis.
Such issues raise concerns that geodemographics in the
age of Big Data is becoming less scientic (Longley,
2012: 2228), even as that fear that overlooks the shared
history of a market-oriented epistemology.

Theoretical approaches
Other scholars oer more theoretical critiques of geodemographic analysis that retain relevance for critically
understanding spatial Big Data. Goss (1995a) outlines
how geodemographic systems are a strategy for producing a control society and the social subjects within
that context. Surveillance technologies and practices
rst collect data about individuals that is classied
within geodemographic systems. The resulting socially
classied knowledge denes social and geographical
subject positions through advertising, reproducing
those social, geographical categories in peoples

material consumptive practices. In this way, a geodemographic system produc[es] the conditions of its own
reproduction (Goss, 1995a, 1995b). At stake in such
systems is not merely the invasion of privacy, but also
the very autonomy to choose individual paths and life
outcomes. For example, if based on census data, a particular neighborhood ts into the Hard-Pressed
Families geodemographic class, that neighborhood
may become the target of a direct mail campaign for
sub-prime mortgage renancing. As residents of that
neighborhood renance their properties, the neighborhood itself is materially reproduced by and in the terms
of that geodemographic class, making it ever more ripe
for subsequent sub-prime marketing.
Though powerful, Goss critique is contingent on
geodemographic targeting and the resulting advertising
actually functioning as well as proponents claim.
However, geodemographics need not be wholly eective to raise social and ethical questions.
Lyon (2002) argues that geodemographics relies on a
phenetic x of classication with consequences for
social opportunity. Geodemographic systems capture
personal data triggered by human bodies and . . . use
these abstractions to place people in new social classes
of income, attributes, preferences, or oences, in order
to inuence, manage or control them (Lyon, 2002). In
practice, some classes of people will be more promising
for particular ends than others and will therefore garner
more or better advertised opportunities, while others
are ignored or oered inferior options. Parker et al.
(2007: 917) highlight the recursive nature of this process: Class places people into dierent types of
places, in turn producing the spaces of particular
classes. The application and impact of geodemographic classication recursively reinforces this spatialization of class (2007: 917) by quantifying and
codifying it through the presentation of advertising
and services meant for that recursively constituted
class. Within trends towards more splintered urban realities (Graham and Marvin, 2001), Phillips and Curry
(2003) suggest a darker consequence: codifying classes
through geodemographic divisions constitutes a form
of redlining based on geodemographic classes and geographic units, and therein a loss of the public domain.
Spatial Big Datas production of social subjects presents similar issues, but at a more personalized scale.
For example, a Big Data analysis of data from a smartphone locative application, such as Waze or Gas Buddy,
would show that a particular motorist regularly drives a
particular stretch of road. Based on that knowledge,
gas stations along that route could oer advertisements
or even discounts on food with the purchase of gas,
producing or reproducing that motorist as a consumer
subject at that location. If the motorist in question
stops and takes advantage of a deal, that additional

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Big Data & Society

data is entered into the related datasets for subsequent

marketing. Such a system has the possibility of creating
a feedback loop wherein incentivized behavior is fed
into the system to shape future marketed options
(Lohr, 2012a). Much like geodemographics (Goss,
1995b), social identity is produced through a surveillance-heavy strategic system focused on consumption
that by functioning, or even appearing to function, validates itself in the market.
The charge of class-based division and redlining is
no less relevant to spatial Big Data, though again at a
dierent scale. Even personalized spatial Big Data algorithms rely on some form classication to match ads
with consumers, such as calculated relevance or distance to a given consumer subject. Foursquare, for
example, promises to target ads to users based upon
what they do, where they go, and what their friends
are doing (Carr, 2013). This may have material eects
on where individuals go and what they consume. In the
gas station example, someone who does not generate
data through smartphone use will not receive the same
discounted food prices. Just as geodemographics produced redlining based on its own classes, spatial Big
Data has the ability to produce similar results on the
individual level. Similarly, businesses in poor areas
have less of a digital footprint with which to attract
digitally savvy consumers (Baginski et al.,
2014). Much like the practical, methodological concerns, critical approaches to geodemographics help
highlight fundamental issues in spatial Big Data.
Researchers must understand the inherent processes
of surveillance, unequal opportunities, and limited,
self-reproducing consumer subjects and spaces at
work in these elds.

Conclusions for a critical data studies

Whatever the sales pitch, spatial Big Data is denitively
tied to the problems and limits of its precursors.
Drawing the connections to geodemographics highlights the shared foundational assumption of quantiable, predicable social identity. From that common
foundation spring shared traits of a market-based epistemology and black-boxing, as well as the problems of
data diversity and scale that helped lead to current spatial Big Data applications.
As practices shaped by Big Data fade into the banality of everyday life, it is vital to remember the social
contingencies that led to these services and technologies. For consumer users, this context is a means to
prevent the complete naturalization of Big Data services. It is important to continually explore creative
possibilities found within large data sets and to
highlight the development of alternative relations to
them.

For scholars and Big Data practitioners, the stakes

are even higher. Basing research on individualized spatial data run through black boxed processes with an
epistemology of market competition marks several serious issues. What research is too private or connects too
many bits of personal information to be ethical? Who
denes those standards? With as few as four spatiotemporal points necessary for unique identication
(de Montjoye et al., 2013), the power of cutting edge
data analytics has far outstripped the protections
oered by traditional Institutional Review Boards,
and no formal or legal ethical standards exist in the
private sector. Beyond fundamental questions of what
ethical data is, even with such data in hand, researchers
must determine when do the results of an analysis
reect internal algorithmic processes and what biases
do those processes bring? How can spatial Big Data
studies be replicated and what is the measure of signicance? Is Better than Google good enough (Hern,
2014)?
The technological basis of data collection and analysis also points to a variety of social issues. As Goss
(1995b) and Parker et al. (2007) argued about geodemographics, spatial Big Data can create a societal feedback loop, creating individual subjects and a society
whose views and actions reect the limited choices
that their technological devices optimize to their constructed class prole. Technology enables and constrains actions and thoughts (Feenberg, 1999), and we
must ask whether our phones have unintentionally
locked us into sets of epistemologies and identities;
how these tools that enable so much in our daily
lives, simultaneously constrain what we know and
what we do. Eating at an Indian restaurant?
Purchasing the latest pair of running shoes?
Furthermore, as Phillips and Curry (2003) pointed
out concerning geodemographics, spatial Big Data
need not even be successful in that pursuit to have serious social implications. Spatial Big Data presents not
only a splintered urban environment (Graham and
Marvin, 2001), but one of uneven development globally
(Smith, 2008). Spatial Big Data and its analyses force
consideration of data divides: between those who produce data and those who dont (Kelley, 2014) as well as
those who have the tools to analyze it and those who
dont (Andrejevic, 2014). The targeting and personalization that spatial Big Data facilitates reects this
uneven geography and social reach. Even in the US
and UK, personalized spatial Big Data services by
their very denition create dierent, unequal choices
and opportunities, depending on who and where you
are. Redlining in the 21st century need not be by neighborhood, it is individualized.
Any spatial Big Data initiative must be prepared
to face these issues, for Big Datas rhetoric of

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Dalton and Thatcher

11

exceptional newness may distract from them, but it cannot resolve them. As scholars and practitioners using
spatial Big Data, we are in part responsible for the
knowledge and social relations that these issues
create and re-create. In this context, it is crucial to
develop critical (and self-critical) perspectives and
approaches to spatial Big Data and subsequent technologies (Dalton and Thatcher, 2014). Just as GIS practitioners cannot stand aside from the processes and
consequences of the technology (Crampton, 2010),
we scholars and practitioners of spatial Big Data must
evaluate our situatedness and positionality (Haraway,
1991; Harding, 2004) and the forms of knowledge and
social relations we help produce. Such an approach
entails more than rening practices. It requires reexively analyzing spatial Big Data and its own analytics
in context, not as indicators of some event, but as phenomena and epiphenomena in and of themselves
(Wilson, 2014b). Establishing the historical, social context of a technology is a key step in demystifying and
denaturalizing it. The historical pre-conditions for spatial Big Data set by geodemographics and earlier developments (Barnes and Wilson, 2014) allow us to learn
from those earlier processes to better critically evaluate
current technologies and knowledge. Big Data has historical antecedents and so too does critical thought on
technology (Feenberg, 1999; Marcuse, 1982; OSullivan,
2006) and its spatial aspects (OSullivan, 2006; Pickles,
1995; Schuurman, 2000). These approaches can and
should inform reexive, critical engagements of spatial
Big Data.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conicts of interest
with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no nancial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes
1. Data about me and the analytics applied to it, not the
location-based hardware and software that collected it.
2. Geographic information, software, and hardware that
operate over the World Wide Web.
3. In June 2013, Google acquired Waze, a social media trafficnavigation company, for nearly one billion dollars after a
bidding war with Facebook and Apple (Graziano, 2013).
Weeks later, Apple acquired both Locationary Inc., which
maps business locations, and HopStop, an urban routefinding platform (Burrows and Frier, 2013; Paczkowski
and Gannes, 2013).
4. Such as liking a link or picture.

5. https://datasift.com/source/6/twitter
6. http://www.internetlivestats.com/twitter-statistics/
7. Open source geodemographic classifications, which utilize
public data and open algorithms, address blackboxing
issues. However, it tends to be exercised by the public
sector, with different imperatives and mandates for transparency than commercial geodemographic analyses
(Singleton and Longley, 2009).
8. An IP address is a series of numbers (such as 192.168.0.1)
used to identify every device participating in a computer network using the defined Internet Protocol for communication.

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