300250 Methoden quantitativ: Introduction to Computational Social Science (S) (WiSe 2019/2020)

Computational social science is an approach that combines computer science and social sciences to make use of novel data types and sources to answer sociological and sociopolitical questions. This seminar presents an introduction to the basic concepts required when approaching computational social science from a social science background. The course covers topics such as data types and data sources, algorithms and computational performance, online and social media data, web scraping and api usage, handling big data sets, processing of text data, data visualisation and research data management. Most importantly it will also be discussed which questions can be answered using these techniques, where possible limitations lie and what encompasses good computational social science research. Students will make use of the statistical software R to apply newfound knowledge in a practical setting.

The seminar will be held in English. Assigments (Studienleistung) will also be in English. Term papers (Prüfungsleistung / Hausarbeit) can be conducted in English or German. Some practical knowledge about working with data is required (e.g. knowledge of univariate statistics or the previous use of another statistical software like SPSS or STATA). Knowledge of R is advantageous, but a very brief introduction will be given to show students with no prior knowledge some resources to catch up on their own.