Methods for digital analysis
Etablissement : ESPOL European School of Political and Social Sciences
Langue : Anglais
Formation(s) dans laquelle/lesquelles le cours apparait :
Période : S1
A basic understanding of statistics and research methods is useful for this course, though not mandatory. Familiarity with programming or data analysis tools such as R is also beneficial for the practical sessions.
The primary objective of this course is to introduce students to key digital methods for social research, with a particular focus on how digital traces, online content, and social media data can be analyzed to study contemporary society. By the end of the course, students will have gained foundational knowledge in content analysis, sentiment analysis, text and data mining, and basic network analysis, learning how to extract and interpret patterns from digital data. They will also explore how to design and implement web surveys and how to apply basic statistical techniques such as correlation and regression analysis to answer social research questions.
This course introduces key digital methods for social research, combining theoretical insights with practical applications. It begins with studying society through social media and moves on to core techniques such as content analysis, sentiment analysis, text and data mining, and network analysis. Students will also learn about web surveys and basic statistical approaches, including correlation and regression analysis. Several lab sessions will provide hands-on experience with RStudio for content and sentiment analysis, web scraping, network visualization, and data modeling.
