Introduction

Happy new year and welcome to IM904!

For an overview of IM904: Digital Objects, Digital Methods do go to the moodle page and look at the course guide.

What if you have questions about a lecture or lab?

• Lab questions should go the lab lead (see below)
• Questions about lecture should go to the lecturer
• General module questions should go to the course leader, Noortje Marres

Outline

The structure for this lab is:

• Presentation - James gives an overview of the lab sessions (~30 minutes)
• Question and answer session (~15 minutes)
• Break (~10 minutes)
• Task - Dealing with Data (~30 minutes)

You may notice these labs are two hours long. Having two hours allows us to both learn how to use a tool and apply the tool to an interesting piece of data.

Many of these labs consider the interaction of data, tools and approach. You may examine a set of tweets in multiple ways (e.g., categorising tweets, calculating word frequencies or plotting hashtag networks). These data and analysis can be examined within different theoretical frameworks.

Lab and lectures

Week	Lecture	Lab	Lab lead
1	Introduction to digital objects and methods	-	-
2	Mapping	Introduction	James
3	Networks	Data	James
4	Groups	Networks	James
5	Content	Content	Nataliya & Joanna
6	Reading Week	Reading Week	-
7	Events	Visualisation	Nataliya
8	Discourse	Discourse	Pablo
9	Controversies	Workflow	James

Task - Dealing with data

In this task you are asked to take the role of a civil servant. You work as researchers in the fictional 'Department of Social Affairs' and have been asked to examine Media Consumption in Modern Britian.

Your team is evaluating two large data sets.

1. Data from broadcasters. The data shows the where people view TV shows and websites from and how often they are viewed.
2. Social media data from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The data shows posts on shows and websites, friend networks and groups.

You are going to be split into small groups. In your small groups consider the following questions:

• What can each data set tell you about media consumption in modern Britian?
• Would you process the data sets differently?(e.g., using different analysis methods)
• Imagine you are writing a report for your manager. You have to choose one of the data sets for the department to use. Which data set do you choose and why?

You have ~30 minutes to discuss these questions in your groups. Consider what makes data from Twitter and other social media networks different from more traditional data types. Do we need new data collection, analysis or visualisations? How would you use these data to aquire knowledge? James and colleagues will come round to groups and stimulate discussion. Do ask questions and have fun, these are intruiging questions.

Feedback

Groups will have the chance to share their discussions and reveal which data set they chose and why.