Universität Wien

400022 SE Digital Technology and Politics: Computational Social Science Approaches (2022W)

Methods seminar

5.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 40 - Doktoratsstudium Sozialwissenschaften
Continuous assessment of course work
ON-SITE
Moodle

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

max. 15 participants
Language: English

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

  • Monday 10.10. 09:00 - 14:00 C0628A Besprechung SoWi, NIG Universitätsstraße 7/Stg. III/6. Stock, 1010 Wien
  • Tuesday 11.10. 09:00 - 14:00 C0628A Besprechung SoWi, NIG Universitätsstraße 7/Stg. III/6. Stock, 1010 Wien
  • Wednesday 12.10. 09:00 - 13:00 C0628A Besprechung SoWi, NIG Universitätsstraße 7/Stg. III/6. Stock, 1010 Wien
  • Thursday 13.10. 09:00 - 13:00 C0628A Besprechung SoWi, NIG Universitätsstraße 7/Stg. III/6. Stock, 1010 Wien
  • Friday 14.10. 09:00 - 13:00 C0628A Besprechung SoWi, NIG Universitätsstraße 7/Stg. III/6. Stock, 1010 Wien

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

Digital technology has had a pervasive effect on key aspects of democratic politics,
including political communication, political participation, and policy-making. The impact of
digital technology permeates the entire political process, affecting the flow of information
among citizen and political actors, the connection between the mass public and political
elites, and the development of policy responses to societal problems. At the same time,
computational social science approaches such as web scraping, natural language
processing, and machine learning have enabled the collection and analysis of digital data to
study the relationship between digital technology and politics.
The goal of this course is to provide participants with the conceptual and methodological
knowledge, as well as the practical skills, to study a wide range of topics related to digital
technology and politics using computational social science approaches. The emphasis will
be on the link between research questions, data collection, descriptive analysis, and causal
analysis. Moreover, considerable emphasis will be placed on practical skills for real research
scenarios. Given resources and data access constraints, which questions can be answered,
and how? What are the particular challenges linked to the collection and analysis of digital
data, and how can they be overcome?
Each day will divided into a morning and an afternoon session. The morning sessions will
consist of lectures providing a mix of theoretical and methodological inputs as well as
practical tips for designing and conducting analyses of digital technology and politics using
computational social science approaches. The afternoon sessions will be structured as
workshops focused on developing original research designs step by step, based on the
morning lectures as well as the readings

Assessment and permitted materials

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

Requirements: any course covering research design as well as an introduction to
quantitative methods. The assignments will accommodate a broad range of methodological
backgrounds beyond the pre-requisite level.
Assessment criteria: homework (four short memos summarizing the ideas of the day,
working towards the research design) (10%); presentation of draft research design (20%);
research design (70%)

Examination topics

Reading list

Gilardi, Fabrizio. Digital Technology, Politics, and Policy-Making. Elements in Public Policy.
Cambridge University Press, 2022.
Salganik, Matthew J. Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age. Princeton University
Press, 2019

Association in the course directory

Last modified: Fr 16.09.2022 19:29