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Latest revision as of 17:08, 20 November 2024

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

CDSC members at the CDSC group retreat in September 2024 in West Lafayette. Check out our other group photos!

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.

To learn more about the CDSC, please check out our about page (especially the links there). Prospective students should also review these materials.

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 wiki is on our Workshops and Classes page. In this page, we only list ongoing classes and workshops.

Purdue Courses

[Summer 2023] Advanced Computational Communication Methods – In this class, we will investigate a number of more advanced methods or concepts not covered in the Intro to Programming and Data Science course, including SQL, computational text analysis, creating reproducible projects, and advanced visualization.
[Spring 2023] Quantitative Methods for Communication – This course introduces students to a range of social-scientific research methods used to investigate human communication, with a focus on research design, statistics, and statistical software. Taught by Jeremy Foote and Hazel Chiu.

University of Washington Courses

[Fall 2024] COM 481: Online Communities — An undergraduate course on online communities taught by Benjamin Mako Hill and Ellie Mercedes Ross.
[Fall 2024] COMMLD 570A/COM 597A: Building Successful Online Communities — A course on online communities taught by Benjamin Mako Hill in both the Communication Leadership Masters Program (COMMLD) and the Department of Communication MA/PhD program (COM 597A). Registration in the latter is very limited.

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.

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.

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 <math> tags like this: <math>\frac{\sigma}{\sqrt{n}}</math> and it will write ${\frac {\sigma }{\sqrt {n}}}$ .

Research News

Follow us as @comdatasci on Twitter and @communitydata@social.coop in the Fediverse/Mastodon and subscribe to the Community Data Science Collective blog.

Recent posts from the blog include:

On The Challenges of Governing the Online Commons: Over the past several months (post-general exam!), I have been thinking and reading about organizational and institutional perspectives on the governance of platforms and the online communities that populate them. While much of the research on the emerging area of “platform governance” draws from legal traditions or socio-technical approaches, there is also a smaller subset …
Continue reading "On The Challenges of Governing the Online Commons"; — Zarine Kharazian http://zarine.net 2024-11-21

CDSC at CSCW 2024: Moderation, Bots, Taboos, and Governance Capture!: If you are attending the ACM conference on Computer-supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW) this year CSCW in San José, Costa Rica. You are warmly invited to join CDSC members during our talks and other scheduled events. Please come say hi! This CDSC has four papers at CSCW, which we will be presenting over …
Continue reading "CDSC at CSCW 2024: Moderation, Bots, Taboos, and Governance Capture!"; — kaylea 2024-11-11

Dr. Yoel Roth: Online Safety and Security: On Oct. 23, 2024, Dr. Yoel Roth gave a lecture titled as “Decentralizing online safety and security: The promises and perils of federated social media” hosted by the Department of Human-Centered Design and Engineering at University of Washington, and a number of CDSC faculty and students were present and discussed issues of digital governance with …
Continue reading "Dr. Yoel Roth: Online Safety and Security"; — madisondeyo 2024-11-09

FOSSY 2024 Wrap Up: Sophia Vargas on “A review of valuation models and their application to open source models”: In the seventh talk of the Science of Community track we organized for FOSSY, Google FOSS researcher Sophia Vargas offered an overview of different strategies for measuring the value of open source (particularly in the context of a company thinking about how to engage with FOSS). Some of Sophia’s key insights are: models for measuring …
Continue reading "FOSSY 2024 Wrap Up: Sophia Vargas on “A review of valuation models and their application to open source models”"; — kaylea 2024-10-15

Check Out the PhD Q&A Session!: Missed the prospective student Q&A session? Fear not, you can still hear from our faculty members, see a few examples of current students research, and listen to answers for our prospective student audience. You can find more resources about the Community Data Science Collective below: Still have questions for our group? Check out our people …
Continue reading "Check Out the PhD Q&A Session!"; — madisondeyo 2024-10-23

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-{{Banner}}
+__NOTOC__
+The '''Community Data Science Collective''' is an interdisciplinary research group made up of faculty and students at the [http://www.com.washington.edu/ University of Washington Department of Communication], the [https://communication.northwestern.edu/academics/communication-studies/ Northwestern University Department of Communication Studies], the [https://www.carleton.edu/computer-science/ Carleton College Computer Science Department], the [https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/ School of Information at UT Austin] and the [https://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/communication/ Purdue University School of Communication].
-The [[Community Data Science Collective]] is an interdisciplinary research group made of up of faculty and students at the [http://www.com.washington.edu/ University of Washington Department of Communication] and the [http://www.communication.northwestern.edu/departments/communicationstudies/ Northwestern University Department of Communication Studies].
+<div class="row">
+<div class="col-md-9">
+<div class="res-box">
+[[File:CDSC_group_photo-20240912-fun.jpg|frame|1000px|[[People|CDSC members]] at the CDSC group retreat in September 2024 in West Lafayette. Check out our other [[group photos]]!]]
+</div>
 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.
@@ Line 10: / Line 15: @@
 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.
-The group is led by [http://mako.cc/academic/ Benjamin Mako Hill] and [http://aaronshaw.org/ Aaron Shaw].
+To learn more about the CDSC, please check out our [[About|about page]] (especially the links there). Prospective students should also review [[CommunityData:Prospective_students|these materials]].
+== 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 wiki is on our [[Workshops and Classes]] page. In this page, we only list ongoing classes and workshops.
+<!-- === Northwestern Courses === -->
-<div class="infobox" style="width: 400px">
+=== Purdue Courses ===
-=== Recent Blog Posts ===
+* '''[Summer 2023]''' '''[[Advanced Computational Communication Methods (Summer 2023) | Advanced Computational Communication Methods]]''' &ndash; In this class, we will investigate a number of more advanced methods or concepts not covered in the Intro to Programming and Data Science course, including SQL, computational text analysis, creating reproducible projects, and advanced visualization.
+* '''[Spring 2023]''' '''[[Quantitative_Methods_for_Communication_(Spring_2023) | Quantitative Methods for Communication]]''' &ndash; This course introduces students to a range of social-scientific research methods used to investigate human communication, with a focus on research design, statistics, and statistical software. Taught by [[User:Jdfoote|Jeremy Foote]] and Hazel Chiu.
-<rss max=4 date="Y-m-d">https://blog.communitydata.cc/feed/atom/</rss>
+<!--
+* '''[Fall 2022]''' '''[[Communication and Social Networks (Fall 2022)|Communication and Social Networks (COM 411, Fall 2022)]]''' &ndash; This class focuses on understanding how the structure of relationships between people influence communication patterns and behavior. This perspective can help us to understand a broad set of phenomena, from online communities to friendships to businesses. The course will also introduce students to using network visualizations to gain and share insights about network phenomena. Taught by [[User:Jdfoote|Jeremy Foote]].
-</div>
+* '''[Fall 2022]''' '''[[Intro to Programming and Data Science (Fall 2022)|Intro to Programming and Data Science (COM 674, Fall 2022)]]'''  Taught by [[User:Jdfoote|Jeremy Foote]].
+-->
-== This Wiki==
+=== University of Washington Courses ===
-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 [[:w:WP:BOLD|Be Bold]]. If things don't fit, somebody who watches this wiki will be in touch.
+* '''[Fall 2024]''' '''[[Online Communities (UW COM481 Fall 2024)|COM 481: Online Communities]]''' — An undergraduate course on online communities taught by [[User:Mako|Benjamin Mako Hill]] and [[Ellie Mercedes Ross]].
+* '''[Fall 2024]''' '''[[Building Successful Online Communities (Fall 2024)|COMMLD 570A/COM 597A: Building Successful Online Communities]]''' — A course on online communities taught by [[User:Mako|Benjamin Mako Hill]] in both the Communication Leadership Masters Program (COMMLD) and the Department of Communication MA/PhD program (COM 597A). Registration in the latter is very limited.
-== Public Workshops ==
+== Public Data Science Workshops ==
+{{banner}}
-'''[[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 four times in Seattle in 2014 and 2015. So far, more than 80 people have volunteered their weekends to teach more than 350 people to program in Python, to build datasets from Web APIs, and to ask and answer questions using these data.
+'''[[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.
 <gallery mode="packed-overlay" heights="100px">
@@ Line 35: / Line 50: @@
 </gallery>
-== University of Washington Courses ==
+== Research Resources ==
-* '''[Winter 2017]''' '''[[Statistics and Statistical Programming (Winter 2017) |COM521: Statistics and Statistical Programming]]''' — A quarter-long quantitative methods course that builds a first-quarter introduction to quantitative methodology and that focuses on both the more mathematical elements of statistics as well as the nuts-and-bolts of statistical programming in the GNU R programming language.
+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.
-* '''[Fall 2016]''' '''[[Building Successful Online Communities (Fall 2016)|COM597A: Building Successful Online Communities]]''' — A quarter-long course taught by [[User:Benjamin Mako Hill|Benjamin Mako Hill]] on online communities and computer mediated communication with an emphasis on learning from research in social psychology, sociology, and behavioral economics. The course is taught in the [http://commlead.uw.edu/ University of Washington's Communication Leadership program].
+== About This Wiki==
-* '''[Spring 2016]''' '''[[Community Data Science Course (Spring 2016)|COM597: Programming and Data Science for Social Media]]''' — A quarter-long course taught by [[User:Guyrt|Tommy Guy]] that adapts and builds upon the [[CDSW]] curriculum to teach introductory programming and data science to absolute beginners in the context of the [http://commlead.uw.edu/ University of Washington's Communication Leadership program].
+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 [[:w:WP:BOLD|Be Bold]]. If things don't fit, somebody who watches this wiki will be in touch.
-* '''[Spring 2016]''' '''[[DS4UX (Spring 2016)|HCDE598: Data Science for User Experience Researchers]]:''' A special topics course in the "Masters in Human Centered Design & Engineering" program covering the use of data science tools and concepts to conduct research with open online data taught by [[User:Jtmorgan|Jonathan Morgan]].
+This is mostly a normal [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki MediaWiki] although there are a few things to know:
-* '''[Spring 2016]''' '''[[Innovation Communities (Spring 2016)|COM597F: Innovation Communities]]''' — A [http://http://commlead.washington.edu/ UW Communication Leadership’s] elective in the “Masters in Communication in Communities and Networks” program covering using online communities to harness user innovation taught by [[User:Benjamin Mako Hill|Benjamin Mako Hill]].
+* There's a CAPTCHA enabled. If you create an account and then contact any [[People|collective member]] with the username (on or off wiki), they can turn the CAPTCHA off for you.
+* [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Math Extension:Math] is installed so you can write math here. Basically you just add math by putting TeX inside <nowiki><math></nowiki> tags like this: <nowiki><math>\frac{\sigma}{\sqrt{n}}</math></nowiki> and it will write <math>\frac{\sigma}{\sqrt{n}}</math>.
+</div>
-* '''[Spring 2016]''' '''[[Internet Research Methods (Spring 2016)|COM528: Internet Research Methods]]''' — A MA/PhD class offering a survey of several Internet research methods taught by [[User:Benjamin Mako Hill|Benjamin Mako Hill]].
+<div class="col-md-3" style="font-size: 80%;">
+<h3>Research News</h3>
-* '''[Fall 2015]''' '''[[Interpersonal Media (Fall 2015)|COM482: Interpersonal Media: Online Communities]]''' —  A course on online communities and computer mediated communication taught by [[User:Benjamin Mako Hill|Benjamin Mako Hill]].
+Follow us as [https://twitter.com/comdatasci @comdatasci on Twitter] and [https://social.coop/@communitydata @communitydata@social.coop in the Fediverse/Mastodon] and subscribe to the [https://blog.communitydata.science/ Community Data Science Collective blog].
-* '''[Spring 2015]''' '''[[Community Data Science Course (Spring 2015)|COM597: Programming and Data Science for Social Media]]''' — A quarter-long course taughted by [[User:Benjamin Mako Hill|Benjamin Mako Hill]] that adapts and builds upon the [[CDSW]] curriculum to teach introductory programming and data science to absolute beginners in the context of the [http://commlead.uw.edu/ University of Washington's Communication Leadership program].
+Recent posts from the blog include:
-== Northwestern Courses & Workshop ==
+<rss max=5 date="Y-m-d">https://blog.communitydata.science/feed/atom/</rss>
+</div>
-* '''[http://aaronshaw.org/teaching/2016/occ Online Communities & Crowds (COMMST 378, Fall 2016)]''' — This advanced undergraduate course presents an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of online communities and crowds, with a particular emphasis on how and why some of these systems are so wildly effective at mobilizing and organizing people in ways that seem to have been impossible a few decades ago.
+</div>
-* '''[http://aaronshaw.org/teaching/2016/mts501 Introduction to Graduate Research (MTS 501, Fall 2016)]''' — The first of two required seminars in the Media, Technology & Society (MTS) and Technology and Social Behavior (TSB) programs, this course introduces first year Ph.D. students to research skills and gives guidance on how to be a productive and responsible scholar.
-* '''[[BYOR|Bring Your Own Research Workshop (BYOR)]]''' — A research workshop for CDSC affiliates and fellow travelers at Northwestern convened by [[User:Aaronshaw|Aaron Shaw]]. Participants present work and provide peer feedback/accountability in weekly meetings. Most members of the group are affiliates of the [http://mts.northwestern.edu Media, Technology & Society] and [http://tsb.northwestern.edu Technology & Social Behavior] programs at Northwestern and study online communities, collective action, organizations, collaboration, and related topics.
-* '''[[Practice_of_scholarship_(Spring_2016)|The Practice of Scholarship (MTS 503, Spring 2016)]]''' — The second of two required seminars in the Media, Technology & Society (MTS) and Technology and Social Behavior (TSB) programs, the goal for this course is simple: submit a piece of academic research for publication by the end of the quarter. The course and assignments are structured to help students cultivate (more of) the skills, wisdom, and experience necessary to publish independent, original, and high-quality scholarship in relevant venues for their work. The experience will probably feel like a combination of a writing bootcamp and an extended group therapy session.
-== 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.
-== License ==
-Unless otherwise noted, everything on this wiki is freely available under the [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License] so you should feel encouraged to build on and expand this content.