BUiLD workshop: Big Data Analysis for Social Scientists

Big Data Analysis for Social Scientists

with Assoc Prof Robert Ackland, ANU

Contents

This is a two-day hands-on masterclass on big data and data scraping - how to do it and use it. It includes an overview of systemic approaches for studying networks on the World Wide Web, information retrieval, data visualisation and social network analysis.The focus is on the collection and analysis of social media network and text data (e.g. Twitter, Reddit, Youtube) using the following tools:

• R and RStudio
• VOSON Dashboard R/Shiny web app
• vosonSML R package
• quanteda, tidytext, and an
• Introduction to network visualisation using Gephi

Light lunch and refreshments will be provided.

There are some additional requirements for this workshop:

• Participants will need to bring their own laptop with the required software installed (links to be circulated to attendees).
• This masterclass has limited spaces aso please only register if you an attend both days.

Presenter

Dr Robert Acklands works at the intersection of empirical social science and computer science, developing new approaches (involving information retrieval, data visualisation and social network analysis) for studying networks on the World Wide Web. He has been a chief investigator on five Australian Research Council grants and under a 2005 ARC Special Research Initiative (e-Research Support) grant, he established the Virtual Observatory for the Study of Online Networks project. Robert has co-organised symposia focusing on e-Social Science (2004) and the social impact of nanotechnology (2006) and in 2007, he spent six months at the Oxford Internet Institute under a UK National Centre for e-Social Science Visiting Fellowship and a University of Oxford James Martin Visiting Fellowship.

Robert has degrees in economics from the University of Melbourne, Yale University (where he was a Fulbright Scholar) and the ANU, where he completed his PhD in economics (on index number theory and international comparisons of income) in 2001. Prior to commencing his PhD, Robert gained extensive experience in applied economic and statistical analysis in the government and non-government sectors. From 1991-1993, he worked as a senior researcher in the Bureau of Immigration Research (Commonwealth Department of Immigration). He worked as a World Bank consultant (based in Washington DC, 1995-1997) in the area of poverty analysis and has also consulted on AusAID and Asian Development Bank projects in this area. Robert teaches courses on the social science of the Internet and online research method in the Master of Social Research and his book Web Social Science: Concepts, Data and Tools for Social Scientists in the Digital Age was published by SAGE in 2013.