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CDSC members plus affiliates and guests at Northwestern University September 2019. Back row, from left to right: Aaron, Nate, Jeremy, Mako, Jim, Charlie, Regina, Salt. Front row, f.l.t.r.: Sohyeon, Kaylea, Nick, Sejal, Floor, Jackie.

The Community Data Science Collective is an interdisciplinary research group made of up of faculty and students at the University of Washington Department of Communication, the Northwestern University Department of Communication Studies, the University of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science, the Carleton College Computer Science Department, and the Purdue University School of Communication.

We are social scientists applying a range of quantitative and qualitative methods to the study of online communities. We seek to understand both how and why some attempts at collaborative production — like Wikipedia and Linux — build large volunteer communities and high quality work products.

Our research is particularly focused on how the design of communication and information technologies shape fundamental social outcomes with broad theoretical and practical implications — like an individual’s decision to join a community, contribute to a public good, or a group’s ability to make decisions democratically.

Our research is deeply interdisciplinary, most frequently consists of “big data” quantitative analyses, and lies at the intersection of communication, sociology, and human-computer interaction.

Courses

In addition to research, we teach classes and run workshops. Some of that work is coordinated on this wiki. A more detailed lists of workshops and teaching material on this wikis is on our Workshops and Classes page. In this page, we only list ongoing classes and workshops.

University of Washington Courses

• [Winter 2020] COM482: Interpersonal Media: Online Communities — A course on online communities and computer mediated communication with an emphasis on learning from research in social psychology, sociology, and behavioral economics taught by Benjamin Mako Hill.
• [Winter 2020] COM528: Internet Research Methods — A MA/PhD class offering a survey of several Internet research methods taught by Benjamin Mako Hill.

Northwestern Courses

• [Winter 2020] History and Theory of Information — We live in an information age, with computers of unprecedented power in our pockets. This course seeks to understand how information shapes our lives today, and how it has in the past. It does so via an interdisciplinary inquiry into four technological infrastructures of information and communication—print, wires, airwaves, and bits. Co-taught by Aaron Shaw and Daniel Immerwahr.

Public Data Science Workshops

Click here for details and to sign up for announcements about upcoming Community Data Science Workshops in Seattle.

Community Data Science Workshops — The Community Data Science Workshops (CDSW) are a series of workshops designed to introduce some of the basic tools of programming and analysis of data from online communities to absolute beginners. The CDSW have been held six times in Seattle between 2014 and 2020. So far, more than 100 people have volunteered their weekends to teach more than 500 people to program in Python, to build datasets from Web APIs, and to ask and answer questions using these data.

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Research Resources

If you are a member of the collective, perhaps you're looking for CommunityData:Resources which includes details on email, TeX templates, documentation on our computing resources, etc.

Research News

Follow us as @comdatasci on Twitter and subscribe to the Community Data Science Collective blog.

Recent posts from the blog include:

Jacobs Fellowship to study new frontier in tech education

This article is a reposted article from Doug Parry’s article in the UW iSchool News Website. The project is being driven by Stefania Druga who is part of the Community Data Science learning team and Mako. Jason Yip is a group friend. A decade ago, teaching kids to code might have seemed far-fetched to some, …

Continue reading "Jacobs Fellowship to study new frontier in tech education"

— st3f 2020-02-16

Reflections on Janet Fulk and Peter Monge

In May 2019, we were invited to give short remarks on the impact of Janet Fulk and Peter Monge at the International Communication Association‘s annual meeting as part of a session called “Igniting a TON (Technology, Organizing, and Networks) of Insights: Recognizing the Contributions of Janet Fulk and Peter Monge in Shaping the Future of …

Continue reading "Reflections on Janet Fulk and Peter Monge"

— Benjamin Mako Hill http://mako.cc 2019-12-23

Modeling the ecological dynamics of online organizations

Do online communities compete with each other over resources or niches? Do they co-evolve in symbiotic or even parasitic relationships? What insights can we gain by applying ecological models of collective behavior to the study of collaborative online groups? We  are delighted to announce that a Community Data Science Collective (CDSC) team led by Nate …

Continue reading "Modeling the ecological dynamics of online organizations"

— Community Data Science Collective https://communitydata.cc/ 2019-12-03

Apply to Join the Community Data Science Collective!

It’s Ph.D. application season and the Community Data Science Collective is recruiting! As always, we are looking for talented people to join our research group. Applying to one of the Ph.D. programs that Aaron, Mako, Sayamindu, and Jeremy are affiliated with is a great way to do that. This post provides a very brief run-down …

Continue reading "Apply to Join the Community Data Science Collective!"

— Community Data Science Collective https://communitydata.cc/ 2019-11-22

About This Wiki

This is open to the public and hackable by all but mostly contains information that will be useful to collective members, their collaborators, people enrolled in their projects, or people interested in building off of their work. If you're interested in making a change or creating content here, generally feel empowered to Be Bold. If things don't fit, somebody who watches this wiki will be in touch.

This is mostly a normal MediaWiki although there are a few things to know:

• There's a CAPTCHA enabled. If you create an account and then contact any collective member with the username (on or off wiki), they can turn the CAPTCHA off for you.
• Extension:Math is installed so you can write math here. Basically you just add math by putting TeX inside <nowiki> tags like this: <math>\frac{\sigma}{\sqrt{n}}</math>