"We citizens have the right to know what other agents are doing with our personal data and to participate in the process of disseminating them. We need a citizens' movement to fight for these rights. This is what Ramon Reichert, professor at the University of Vienna, said about big data. Professor Reichert was one of the speakers at DiscourseNet17, an international congress organized by project 'Public discourse' of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra together with the international network DiscourseNet.

According to agreement , the Austrian specialist, the social network revolution "can become a problem if we only consider the visible part of the networks(front end). We don't think about the back end, the information space behind the interface".

For Reichert, it is essential to "always take into account the symmetrical relationship between the two" and therefore proposed political intervention to legislate the back end. "It is important that each individual can create his or her own sphere of data," he said.

Regarding the role of social networks, he said that they have brought a "certain democratization of power", as they have allowed any citizen to publish content and raise their voice. He also stressed the importance of feedback, which in his opinion "can be very powerful".

Researchers from nearly 20 countries

In this line, he recalled that the networks are "an open space in which everyone can see how we communicate: the State itself, the police..." and for this reason he warned that "in the future communication through social networks may be very controlled by forces that do not take into account the political freedom of society".

Ramon Reichert is Professor of programs of study New Media and Digital Culture at the department for Theatre, Film and Media programs of study at the University of Vienna (Austria). In addition, he is the creator and publisher principal of research 's network 'Social average Studies', which has more than 1,100 members, and has established the forum for the study of digital methods of social media research .

The professor made these statements at the framework of DiscourseNet 17. The congress, held March 16-18, 2016, was a venue of meeting for researchers from nearly 20 countries interested in both the role of reflexivity and critique within the study of speech and the role those play in various social realities.