6.2 Big data

The events developed during the process of revolution and industrial transformation and current technological change have been fundamental in history. Nevertheless, it is in the 20th century that it is a reaffirmation of automation through big data (Túñez López & Toural-Bran, 2018, p. 185) and other technologies such as the internet of things that has allowed automation smart arise. Possibly this is the technology that has generated the most contribution to automation.

Big data are two words in English that translated into Spanish refer to large amount of data, an immense set of information that is complex storage, analysis, and management. Right now, big data represents an opportunity for rapprochement with audiences for organizations. So companies begin to segment the databases according to their audiences of interest and thus avoid excessive accumulation of information that is very complex to administer.

Part of this big data growth, which has been caused in recent years, is due to the development of the capacity of computers and other machines aligned to electronics to store to analyse and use information generated by companies or the same internet platforms.

When the machine is used for the analysis of big data in communication, texts can be built and that is what journalism has done so far. For Carreira and Squirra (2017, p. 66) the value of big data is not only the exploitation of the data itself, but the possibility of building a narrative from it. And it is because of this that the automation of news is provoked where there are technologies and techniques joined through programming codes that yield the final result of the news.

It is important to keep in mind that the starting point to think about this moment in history and its communication objectives are not the data (Hammond, 2013). The data help communication and are support tools. The machine can provide us the human link between the world of big data and the final game we want, a world of evidence-based information and decision making.

With the appearance of the first databases, understood as what we now know and that occurs in the seventies, and from there, begins to manage relevant and appropriate information, which shows the impact of information systems and its value in work within institutions (Macau, 2004, p. 4)

Through big data, companies begin to perform data mining based on interpretations of the data obtained. For Ortega Mohedano and Coronel-Salas (2019, p. 826), the data mining technique allows data analysis to be used for predictive purposes. Even in commercial information, today it is a valuable resource for organizations. According to Moreno et al. (2017, p. 35) in companies the use of automation, data analytics and algorithms have a great tendency to link with various tools that allow creating several activities for the day-to-day activities of the organizations.

In communication, big data has generated high value for the areas of communication and marketing, but especially for the last one, where data is key to get to know and analyse the market, to know patterns, tracking sales, developing messages that contribute with value to products or services, make decisions and to know trends. In the field of public relations or strategic communication, the use of big data is relatively recent; however, in marketing it has had a greater rise (Moreno et al., 2018, p. 89).