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Latest revision as of 16:00, 16 April 2025

The Community Data Science Collective (CDSC) 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

[Fall 2024] Intro to Programming and Data Science (COM 674, Fall 2024) Taught by Jeremy Foote.

[Fall 2024] Communication and Social Networks (Fall 2024) Taught by Jeremy Foote

University of Washington | Bothell Courses

[Fall 2025] CSS360: Software Engineering — Surveys the software engineering processes, tools, and techniques used in software development and quality assurance. Taught by Kaylea Champion.

University of Washington | Seattle Courses

[Spring 2025] COM528: Designing Internet Research — A MA/PhD class offering a survey of several Internet research methods taught by Benjamin Mako Hill.

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:

Come check out the CDSC at ICA 75!: A number of our CDSC folks will be attending the 75th Annual International Communication Association Conference “Disrupting and Consolidating Communication Research” in Denver, Colorado from June 12th to June 16th this year. Below, you can find the schedule of where our CDSC members will be: Friday 10:30 – 11:45, HIGH-DENSITY: Advances and Best Practices in …
Continue reading "Come check out the CDSC at ICA 75!"; — madisondeyo 2025-06-12

Kaylea Champion Receives Dissertation Awards: CDSC member Kaylea Champion’s dissertation, “Social and Technical Sources of Risk in Sustaining Digital Infrastructure,” has been selected for two awards: the 2025 Annie Lang Dissertation Award from the International Communication Association Information Systems Division, and the 2025 Faculty Award for Outstanding Research – Ph.D. Dissertation Award from the Department of Communication University of Washington. …
Continue reading "Kaylea Champion Receives Dissertation Awards"; — Community Data Science Collective https://communitydata.cc/ 2025-06-12

New Research Brief: Online Community Resilience and Attacks on Public Information Goods: Throughout their lifecycles, the online communities that steward public information goods can face a range of threats to their sustainability. Over the course of its existence, Wikipedia, one of the most visible online knowledge commons, has battled the following challenges: At our 11th Science of Community Dialogue on April 4th, which featured a conversation with …
Continue reading "New Research Brief: Online Community Resilience and Attacks on Public Information Goods"; — Zarine Kharazian http://zarine.net 2025-06-09

The Introduction of Documentation in FLOSS Projects: Community decay and abandonment are persistent risks to free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) projects. As such, large institutions such as GitHub or Mozilla offer advice to FLOSS projects on how to organize their work for sustainability and community-building. Guides recommend the production of README files and CONTRIBUTING guides as useful tools in recruiting new …
Continue reading "The Introduction of Documentation in FLOSS Projects"; — mgaughan 2025-05-20

FOSSY 2025: Call for Proposals!: Does your work touch open source, communities, technology, or cooperation? Do you want to help bridge the gaps between research and practice? Join us at FOSSY! The Free and Open Source Software Yearly conference (FOSSY) is back this summer and the call for proposals is open! “I always enjoy the blend of researcher and contributor perspectives in the Science …
Continue reading "FOSSY 2025: Call for Proposals!"; — madisondeyo 2025-04-16

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-{{Banner}}
 __NOTOC__
-[[File:Cdsc 2017 northwestern campus.png|250px|thumb|right|[[People|CDSC members]] on Northwestern University campus in July 2017. Rows from left to right: (back) Mako, Sayamindu, Emilia, Salt; (middle) Nate, Aaron, Jeremy; (front) Charlie.]]
+The '''Community Data Science Collective (CDSC)''' 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].
+<div class="row">
-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="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 13: / 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.
-== Workshops and Courses ==
+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 === -->
+=== Purdue Courses ===
+* '''[Fall 2024]''' '''[[Intro to Programming and Data Science (Fall 2024)|Intro to Programming and Data Science (COM 674, Fall 2024)]]''' Taught by [[User:Jdfoote|Jeremy Foote]].
+* '''[Fall 2024]''' '''[https://canf24.jeremydfoote.com Communication and Social Networks (Fall 2024)]''' Taught by [[User:Jdfoote|Jeremy Foote]]
+=== University of Washington | Bothell Courses ===
+* '''[Fall 2025]''' '''[[Software Engineering (Fall 2025)|CSS360: Software Engineering]]''' — Surveys the software engineering processes, tools, and techniques used in software development and quality assurance. Taught by [[User:Kaylea|Kaylea Champion]].
-In addition to research, we run workshops and teach classes. 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 | Seattle Courses ===
-=== Public Data Science Workshops ===
+* '''[Spring 2025]''' '''[[Designing Internet Research (Spring 2025)|COM528: Designing Internet Research]]''' — A MA/PhD class offering a survey of several Internet research methods taught by [[User:Benjamin Mako Hill|Benjamin Mako Hill]].
-'''[[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 roughly twice a year since beginning in Seattle in 2014. 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.
+== 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 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 28: / Line 47: @@
 </gallery>
-=== University of Washington Courses ===
+== Research Resources ==
-* '''[Fall 2017]''' '''[[HCDS (Fall 2017)|DATA512: Human Centered Data Science]]''' — Fundamental principles of data science and its human implications. Data ethics; data privacy; differential privacy; algorithmic bias; legal frameworks and intellectual property; provenance and reproducibility; data curation and preservation; user experience design and usability testing for big data; ethics of crowdwork; data communication; and societal impacts of data science.
+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 2017]''' '''[[Innovation Communities (Spring 2017)|COM597: 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]].
+== About This Wiki==
-=== Northwestern Courses & Workshop ===
+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.
-* '''[[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.
+This is mostly a normal [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki MediaWiki] although there are a few things to know:
-== Research Resources ==
+* 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>.
-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.
+</div>
-== Research News ==
+<div class="col-md-3" style="font-size: 80%;">
+<h3>Research News</h3>
-Follow us as [https://twitter.com/comdatasci @comdatasci on Twitter] and subscribe to the [https://blog.communitydata.cc/ Community Data Science Collective blog].
+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].
 Recent posts from the blog include:
-<rss max=4 date="Y-m-d">https://blog.communitydata.cc/feed/atom/</rss>
+<rss max=5 date="Y-m-d">https://blog.communitydata.science/feed/atom/</rss>
-== 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 [[:w:WP:BOLD|Be Bold]]. If things don't fit, somebody who watches this wiki will be in touch.
-This is mostly a normal [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki MediaWiki] although there are a few things to know:
-* 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.
+</div>
-* [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><nowiki></nowiki> tags like this: <nowiki><math>\frac{\sigma}{\sqrt{n}}</math></nowiki>
+</div>