ASOK15058U Re-tooling Social Analysis: Behaviors, Networks, Ideas in the digital age (Summer 2019)

This course equips students with the analytic skills and reflexive capacities needed to engage critically but productively with various new 'device-aware' styles of social analysis assisted by digital and computational means. It does so, firstly, by way of reading paradigmatic analyses of the nature of social behaviors, networks and ideas, focusing both on classical concepts and contemporary research frontiers.

Examples are drawn from across all the social-science disciplines, and core interdisciplinary convergences are identified. Second, the course takes students through all the methodological steps of social research design, analysis and interpretation, tying these steps to practical examples and to students' own projects (from other courses). Here, key initial questions include: what are the implications of working with different data types (static vs. dynamic; broad vs. deep); how to think about and practically handle data biases stemming from digital platforms and devices (noise, bots etc.); how to build ethical considerations in from the start of data harvesting (digital research ethics)?

In a next step, students are introduced to key methodological traditions often underlying the analysis of behaviors, networks and ideas, respectively (causal-experimental; pattern search; meaning-oriented), as well as to ways of working across them using various digital data sources as well as combining with other sources (including both quantitative and qualitative). In a final step, students learn how to think critically about the interpretation of their social data analyses, including issues of internal and external validity, representativeness and generalizability, as well as analytical induction and concept work.

Rounding up, thirdly, students are introduced to frameworks for thinking about the changing place of social research in digital societies, including the possibilities and challenges opened up by greater interdisciplinary collaboration as well as new types of academia-industry-government partnerships.