Conference Program: The Empiricist’s Challenge: Asking Meaningful Questions in Political Science in the Age of Big Data

The date of our conference The Empiricist’s Challenge: Asking Meaningful Questions in Political Science in the Age of Big Data is rapidly approaching and we finalized our program. We were lucky to get many fascinating paper submissions so it surely looks like we are in for two very exciting and stimulating days! Have a look at our program.

The Empiricist’s Challenge: Asking Meaningful Questions in the Age of Big Data

Conference Program

DAY 1

9.00 – 9.45: Introduction

• Introduction by conference organisers
• Introduction by Head of department
• Introduction by participants

—15 mins break—

10.00 – 10.45: Keynote W. Lance Bennett

10.45 Panel 1: Collective Action and Campaigning

• 10.45 – 11.00: Contentious Politics on Twitter: A Methodological Approach to Social Media Research in Protest Politics—Camilo Cristancho-Mantilla (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona)
• 11.00 – 11.15: Political Advertising in the Age of Big Data: Microtargeting and its Implications for Political Science Research—Young Mie Kim (University of Wisconsin-Madison) & Daniel Kreiss (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
• 11.15 – 11.30: Transnational Human Rights Advocacy and Big Data—Steven Livingston (University of Washington) & Patrick Meier (Qatar Computing Research Institute)
• Q & A: 11.30 – 12.00

13.30 Panel 2: Social Media Networks and Audiences

• 13.30-13.43: Online Media Networks and Audience Flow: Mapping the Fragmentation in News Production and Consumption on the Web—Sílvia Majó-Vázquez (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya), Ana Sofía Cardenal (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) & Sandra González-Bailón (University of Pennsylvania)
• 13.45-14.00: “Mutual ignoring” as the Generative Mechanism of Cyberbalkanization: Evidence from a Hong Kong Facebook Pages Sharing Network—Chung-hong Chan & King-wa Fu (Hong Kong University)
• 14.00-14.15: “Twitter Friend Repertoires” Researching Patterns of Selective Connectivity—Lisa Merten, Wiebke Loosen, Jan-Hinrik Schmidt, Uwe Hasebrink & Sascha Hölig (Hans Bredow Institute, University of Hamburg)
• Q & A: 14.15 – 14.30

— 14.30 – 15.00 Coffee break —

15.00 – 15.45 Keynote Sandra González-Bailón

15:45 Panel 3: Government and Public Administration

• 15.45-16.00: How Political Tenure Alters Responsiveness to Citizen Engagement in China: Evidence from Computational and Experimental Methods—Jennifer Pan (Stanford University)
• 16.00- 16.15: Web Tracking with Chinese Characteristics: An Investigation of Hidden Data Flows in the Middle Kingdom—Timothy Libert (University of Pensylvania) & Bo Mai (University of Pennsylvania)
• 16.15-16.30: Transparency in Public Procurement: The Strengths and Challenges of Big Data—Mihály Fazekas (University of Cambridge) & Luciana Cingolani (Hertie School of Government)
• Q & A: 16.30 – 16.45

17.00 – 18.00 Keynote Richard Rogers

— 16.45 Coffee break —

DAY 2

9.00 Panel 4: Qualitative Perspectives

• 9.00-9.15: Big Data and Democracy—Ashley Gorham (University of Pennsylvania)
• 9.15-9.30: Introducing Qualitative Big-Data Text Analysis: An Integrated Approach Beyond the Quantitative-Qualitative Divide—Anton Törnberg (Gothenburg University) & Petter Törnberg (Chalmers University of Technology)
• 9.30-9.45: The Challenges of Social Media—Bob Boynton (University of Iowa)
• 9.45-10.00: Using Ethnography to Support Trace Data Collection—Arto Kekkonen (Aalto University), Salla-Maria Laaksonen (Helsinki University), Mari Martilla (Aalto University), Matti Nelimarkka (Helsinki University & Aalto University) & Mari Tuokko (Aalto University)
• Q & A: 10.00 – 10.20

— 10.20 Coffee break —

11.00 Keynote Jonathan Nagler

— 12.00 – 12.20 Sandwiches & coffee —

12.20-12.45 lunch lecture by Rachel Gibson

— 12.45 – 13.00 coffee at the MZES —

13.00 Panel 5: Public Opinion

• 13.00-13.15: Using Wikipedia Page View Statistics to Measure Issue Salience—Simon Munzert (University of Konstanz)
• 13.15-13.30: Less is More? How Demographic Sample Weights can Improve Public Opinion Estimates Based on Twitter data—Pablo Barberá (New York University)
• 13.30-13.45: Keeping the Old Game Alive: Using Survey Methods to Improve Big Data Measures of Public Mood—Heinz Brandenburg (University of Strathclyde), Marcel van Egmond (University of Amsterdam), Rob Johns (University of Essex), Maarja Lühiste (University of Newcastle), Peter Selb (University of Konstanz) & Laura Sudulich (University of Kent)
• Q & A: 13.45 – 14.00

– 14.00 – 14.30 Coffee break —

Roundtable/open feedback round: 14.30 – 16.00

Computational Social Science