The goal of this class is to provide frameworks and hands on experience in analyzing data collected through interviews, observations and other qualitative methods.
This seminar will look at issues raised by a Big Data approach for both aid workers and journalists covering rapidly moving events.
MIT Sloan's Sinan Aral will argue that a new science of online identity could help guide our business, platform design, and social policy decisions in light of the rising importance of online reputation and social influence.
Helen Nissenbaum: "Obfuscation is a compelling 'weapon-of-the-weak,' which deserves to be developed and strengthened, its moral challenges countered and mitigated."
Sociologist Nick Couldry radically rethinks the implications of social constructivism for a work saturated not just with digital media, but with data processes
Sean Cubitt asserts the value of anecdotal evidence against the rise of statistics, but at the same time wants to confront the difficulties in bringing about an encounter between readers (human or otherwise) and the mass image constructed by social media and search giants.
Jennifer Holt examines the legal and cultural crises surrounding the regulation of data in “the cloud.” The complex landscape of laws and policies governing digital data are currently rife with unresolvable conflicts. The challenges of distributing and protecting digital data in a policy landscape that is simultaneously local, national, and global have created problems that often defy legal paradigms, national boundaries, and traditional geographies of control.
Vivid lessons and hands-on practice in communicating scientific research to a general audience.
How do we, as instructors value facts? How do we, or might we, make this valuing explicit in our teaching?