Computational Social Science: Social Research in the Digital Age

Changes in technology---specifically the transition from the analog age to the digital age---mean that we can now collect and analyze social data in new ways. This six week mini-class is about doing social research in these new ways. Unlike some other courses on computational social science, this course will emphasize "social science" and de-emphasize "computation." We will focus on how traditional concepts of research design in the social sciences can inform our understanding of new data sources, and how these new data sources might require us to update our thinking on research design. The course should be helpful for social scientists that want to do more data science and data scientists that want to do more social science. Public course materials are on github: https://github.com/msalganik/soc596_f2016.