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Webinar: Being a Computational Social Scientist

12 May 2020 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Online
Training
Data skills
Other
Scientific research and teaching is increasingly influenced by computational tools, methods and paradigms. The social sciences are no different, with many new forms of social data only available through computational means (Kitchen, 2014). While to some degree social science research has always been marked by technological approaches, the field of computational social science involves the use of tools, data and methods that require a different skill set and mindset.
This free webinar, organised by the UK Data Service, is part of an ongoing series focusing on new forms of data for social science research. Specifically, this webinar demystifies computational social science, and explores how and why social scientists should embrace computational methods. Presented by Dr Julia Kasmire and Dr Diarmuid McDonnell of the UK Data Service, this webinar examines five key domains of computational social science: 
  1. Thinking computationally
  2. Writing code
  3. Computational environments
  4. Manipulating structured and unstructured data
  5. Reproducibility of the scientific workflow
We cover key theories and ideas behind each domain and provide example code, written in the popular Python programming language, that demonstrates some of the key skills computational social scientists need to develop. 
Bibliography
Kitchen, R. (2014). Big Data, new epistemologies and paradigm shifts. Big Data & Society, https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951714528481.

Event resources

Materials associated with the Becoming a Computational Social Scientist training series (GitHub)| Presentation: Being a Computational Social Scientist, Julia Kasmire and Diarmuid McDonnell| Webinar recording