MECO Training Day - Digital Methods.pptx

Training session for HDRs and ECRs on approaching computational methods.

1. Session 2 – Social / Computational methods Professor John Hartley & Dr Jonathon Hutchinson

2. We acknowledge the tradition of custodianship and law of the Country on which the University of Sydney campuses stand . We pay our respects to those who have cared and continue to care for Country .

3. This moment of research is built upon the ‘computational turn’ where ‘computational approaches is increasingly reflected across a number of disciplines, including the arts, humanities and social sciences, which use technologies to shift the critical ground of their concepts and theories’  Berry, 2011, p. 11

4. Digital Methods 2013 Richard Rogers  Datafication ‘turn’ (Lycett, 2013; van Dijck, 2014) Ways to understand human engagement online beyond traditional methods Birthed a new multidisciplinary approach to humanities BUT! Digital methods is nothing without qualitative research, and vice versa

5. Digital methods University of Amsterdam Digital Methods Initiative, Oxford Internet Institute, QUT Digital Media Research Centre USyd hosted digital methods event and published a special issue in Communication Research & Practice 2( 1 ) Birth of 'Twittersphere' Networked publics Evolving approaches towards digital methods Split between computational expertise and humanities

6. USYD TCAT = NECTAR = Intersect

7. Twittersphere Network mapping Social Media Network Analysis (Martin & Hutchinson, 2018) Gephi – algorithmic visualisations using network weighted parameters Bruns, A., Moon, B., Münch, F., & Sadkowsky , T. (2017). The Australian Twittersphere in 2016: Mapping the Follower/ Followee Network. Social Media + Society, 3(4).

8. Digital Humanities

9. #7DaysLater Hutchinson, J. (2015). Public Service Media and Social TV: Bridging or expanding gaps in participation? Media International Australia, 154 , 89-100. 

10. "API- ageddon " - the politics of data Application Programming Interface (API) - the control over these 'hoses' became a tested battlefield The Politics of Twitter Data ( Puschmann & Burgess, 2013) Cambridge Analytica Broken APIs  Broken research Social Science one Furious debate in the academy 

11. Computational Social Science Media and comms continue partnering with computational scientists to work with data New tools, new insights Skills in Python and R Studio become essential in undertaking research in these areas The field that Olga Boichak is very much a part of

12. Where does that leave us? Working with computational social scientists to see what is possible, while reviewing the past 10 years of research Building and sharing tools ICA Computational Methods goes nuts

13. Media Pluralism Project Dashboard (DP180100034) https://media-pluralism.sydney.edu.au/

14. Resources Available to us DMI - https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolDatabase Tableau - https://www.tableau.com/ SIH - https://www.sydney.edu.au/research/facilities/sydney-informatics-hub.html Atlas.ti - https://atlasti.com/

15. Persona Design – Experimental Approaches Design Thinking is an iterative process in which knowledge is constantly being questioned and acquired so it can help us redefine a problem in an attempt to identify alternative strategies and solutions that might not be instantly apparent with our initial level of understanding. (Interaction Design, n.p. )  There are five phases in design thinking: Empathise – with the users. Define – user needs, their problems, and the research insights. Ideate – challenge assumptions and create ideas for innovative solutions. Prototype – start creating solutions. Test – test solutions within the environment. 

16. TikTok video capture integrated with Gemini LLM

17. What projects could use computational social science? What is needed How can we connect people How might you use CSS in your own work?

18. References Bruns, A., Moon, B., Münch, F., & Sadkowsky , T. (2017). The Australian Twittersphere in 2016: Mapping the Follower/ Followee Network. Social Media + Society, 3(4). Lycett, M. (2013). ‘Datafication’: making sense of (big) data in a complex world. European Journal of Information Systems, 22(4), 381–386. Martin, F., & Hutchinson, J. (2018). Deep Data: Analyzing Power and Influence in Social Media Networks. In J. Hunsinger, L. Klastrup, & M. Allen (Eds.), International Handbook of Internet Research (Vol. 2). London: Routledge. Puschmann , C. & Burgess, J. (2013) The Politics of Twitter Data. HIIG Discussion Paper Series No. 2013-01, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2206225 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2206225 Rogers, R. (2013). Digital Methods . Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. van Dijck, J. (2014). Datafication, dataism and dataveillance: Big Data between scientific paradigm and ideology. Surveillance & Society, 12 (2), 197-208.