Courses taught

CACTUS: Computational Analysis for Communication on Text, User-generated content, and Social networks (winter workshop 2021)

In this hands-on course students will learn how to manage large textual datasets (e.g. Twitter, YouTube, news stories) to investigate research questions. They will work through a series of steps to collect, organize, analyze and present textual data by using automated tools toward a final project of relevant interest. The course will cover linguistic theory and techniques that can be applied to textual data (particularly from the fields of corpus linguistics and natural language processing).

By completing this course students will:

• gain an understanding of relevant linguistic concepts for the analysis of text
• understand the field of corpus linguistics and how its concepts and tools can be applied to text analysis questions of relevance to Communication
• be exposed to a range of techniques from natural language processing and understand how they can be used to improve content analyses
• gain a basic level of programming proficiency in the Python programming language and have completed a number of programming exercises to build, clean and analysis corpora of text.

Full syllabus at https://github.com/kj2013/CACTUS_fall2021

CNM4255: COMPUTATIONAL PERSPECTIVES FOR SOCIAL MEDIA

An understanding of how people communicate on social media, and how to mine insights from it, is now imperative in most future careers, ranging from marketing to medicine. First, this module will introduce you to the theoretical concepts related to social media behavior. Second, it will introduce you to methods for collecting and analyzing social media data. Finally, the activities and assignments will help you develop the critical thinking tools necessary to engage in debates about the role of social media in society, and to frame your own ideas and arguments in the wider context of the existing scholarship.

Upon completing this module, students should be able to:
• Explain the major concepts and debates in the communication research literature about social media.
• Gain introductory skills and knowledge of tools to retrieve data from social media services.
• Learn how to explore and analyze social media data in order to report statistics and test hypotheses
• Learn to apply techniques to detect propaganda and bots online
• Synthesize knowledge and skills gained from this course towards their own datasets and projects in the social sciences, communication arts and humanities

NMC5302: DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS AND ANALYTICS

This module explores the fundamental concepts and principles that underlie techniques for extracting useful information and knowledge from digital communication data. It will focus on introducing technical data skills within both social and societal contexts. Data-analytic thinking will be applied in various ways, including customer relationship management, social media marketing and analysis, data-driven decision making and strategic communication. Students will gain an understanding of the nature of data and its significance for society by learning to view problems from a data perspective, and understanding how to critically analyze such problems.

By the end of this course participants should be able to:

• Analyze data using diverse tools to take informed decisions
• Create a communication campaign based on the data
• Tailor the data communication according to the audience and medium of dissemination
• Create a communication strategy based on data analysis to lead an organization in its efforts to communicate its mission, direction and plans and reach its customers, funders, volunteers, employees and other members of its environment
• Connect digital data analysis with the organization’s position in the industry, aims, goals and situation when tailoring communication campaigns.

NM2207: COMPUTATIONAL MEDIA LITERACY

Communication (and most scientific and corporate endeavours today) is deeply entwined with the world of computing. From social media to public relations campaigns, from game design to website layout, from business decision‐making to news, from democratic participation to interactive art – the ability to understand and make creative use of computational media is of fundamental importance. This module is a hands‐on introduction to essential concepts in computational media including internet architecture, mediated communication, interactive systems, animation, visualization, big data, and creative design. JavaScript and other common technologies that power the web are introduced to empower non‐programmers to explore these concepts independently.’

At the end of the module, participants will be able to:

• Understanding the web & new media technology landscape
• Marketable experience
• Prototyping skills – ability to code an animated and interactive website with core HTML5 technologies
• Web portfolio of creative work

CNM4881a: TOPICS IN MEDIA STUDIES: SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media has become a ubiquitous aspect of our daily lives, transforming the ways humans communicate. There are mixed opinions about whether social media has improved or disrupted how people live and think. Does using social media make people happier or lonelier? Is it the friendly butler you never had, or the shady hawker selling your personal information? Does it make society more inclusive or more polarized? This course will give you the knowledge and critical thinking tools that you need to engage in these and other debates, through a critical understanding of social media use, its impact on society, and the social mechanisms underlying social media-based communication. The weekly resources cover a range of textbooks, research and conference papers, news articles, and TV shows so that our theoretical discussions are pertinent to what’s happening in the world today.

At the end of the module, participants will be able to:

1. Explain the major concepts and debates in the communication research literature about social media.
2. Measure social media use: Collect and report basic statistics about a social media user
3. Evaluate major studies in terms of their methods, results, conclusions, and implications
4. Work effectively in groups