In the second week, the course focuses on introducing students to the concepts of Computational Social Science, Digital Methods, and Big Data. For this, we use articles by Cioffi-Revilla (2010) and Rogers (2010). In addition to these surveys of the field, two articles by Conover et al. (2012) and Hanna et al. (2013) serve as examples as to how one can approach research questions in political science by using Twitter data, either through network analysis or time series analysis. Cioffi-Revilla (2014), Lazer et al. (2009), and Rogers (2013) serve as background reading.
Mandatory Readings
Cioffi-Revilla, C. 2010. “Computational social science“. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Computational Statistics 2(3): 259–271.
Conover, M. D., Gonçalves, B., Flammini, A., & Menczer, F. 2012. Partisan asymmetries in online political activity. EPJ Data Science 1(6), 1–19. doi: 10.1140/epjds6
Hanna, A., Wells, C., Maurer, P., Shah, D.V., Friedland, L., & Mattes, J. 2013. Partisan alignments and political polarization online: A computational approach to understanding the French and US presidential elections. In I. Weber, A.M. Popescu, & M. Pennacchiotti (Ed.), PLEAD 2013: Proceedings of the 2nd workshop politics, elections and data (pp. 15–21). New York, NY: ACM.
Rogers, R. 2010. “Internet Research: The Question of Method“. Journal of Information Technology and Politics 7(2-3): 241-260.
Optional readings
Cioffi-Revilla, C. 2014. Introduction to Computational Social Science: Principles and Applications. Heidelberg, DE et al.: Springer.
Lazer D., Pentland A., Adamic L., Aral S., Barabási A.L., Brewer D., Christakis N., Contractor N., Fowler J., Gutmann M., Jebara T., King G., Macy M.W., Roy D., Alstyne M.V. 2009. Computational social science. Science 323(5915): 721–723.
Rogers, R. 2013. Digital Methods. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.