Research Seminar "Data Analytics for Politics and Society"

2025/2026

Учебный год

ENG

Обучение ведется на английском языке

Кто читает:

Департамент социологии

Статус:

Курс обязательный

Когда читается:

1-й курс, 1-4 модуль

Преподаватели

Аркатов Дмитрий Александрович

Черных Екатерина Юрьевна

Course Syllabus

Abstract

The Research Seminar aims at helping students to develop research designs of their term papers and improve their academic writing skills. The seminar is meant to be a workshop resulting in a coherent term paper research design. The class consists of 9 pairs of classes, each pair (except for the first one) devoted to a particular aspect of research design. The first class is devoted to discussing contemporary academic literature with the focus on the specific aspects (e.g, the literature review), while the second class features the discussions of students’ texts within peer review teams. For the seminars students are expected to 1) prepare the specific part of their research proposal, 2) to read their classmates’ texts and comment on them.

Learning Objectives

• The aim is to make students able to read and critically discuss articles from the field of social, political studies and big data analysis, and conduct empirical research using different sources of data

Expected Learning Outcomes

• Applies mining tools to collect, filter, categorize and apply big data from social media for the specialized research
• Applies knowledge on the necessary theoretical, conceptual, methodological, empirical and ethical considerations to build own research.
• Applies datasets amd bases from secondary sources for conducting the specialized research

Course Contents

• Introductory class
• Theory
• Academic and social relevance. Writing a literature review
• Methodology
• Data I
• Data II
• Research ethics
• Empirical chapter
• Mock defense

Assessment Elements

• In-class assignments
  In-class assignments grade will be calculated as an average score for all types of written activities during the seminars.
• Participation in class discussions
• Presentation of the individual project
  Presentation of the individual project includes final presentation on the topic of student’s course work and should represent a solid presentation of research framework, literature review, data description, data analysis and main conclusions.
• Presentation of theoretical parts of the student thesis
• Exam

Interim Assessment

• 2025/2026 2nd module
  -
• 2025/2026 4th module
  0.3 * Exam + 0.15 * In-class assignments + 0.1 * Participation in class discussions + 0.15 * Participation in class discussions + 0.15 * Presentation of the individual project + 0.15 * Presentation of theoretical parts of the student thesis
• 2026/2027 2nd module
  -

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

• Bakshy, E., Messing, S., & Adamic, L. A. (2015). Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook. Science, 348(6239), 1130–1132. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa1160
• Berman, R., Melumad, S., Humphrey, C., & Meyer, R. (2019). A Tale of Two Twitterspheres: Political Microblogging During and After the 2016 Primary and Presidential Debates. Journal of Marketing Research (JMR), 56(6), 895–917. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022243719861923
• Besley, T., & Persson, T. (2009). The origins of state capacity: property rights, taxation and politics. LSE Research Online Documents on Economics.

Recommended Additional Bibliography

• Lynggaard, K. V. aut. (2019). Discourse Analysis and European Union Politics by Kennet Lynggaard. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edswao&AN=edswao.1678679399

Authors

• Arkatov Dmitrii Aleksandrovich
• CHERNYKH EKATERINA YUREVNA
• DYMOVA POLINA MAKSIMOVNA