Over the past few years, social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter have emerged to become a communications infrastructure essential to society and to the individual. A growing part of our daily conversations pass through the mediation of these platforms. This mediation makes conversations once ephemeral, permanent, searchable scalable and replicable.

Starting from a reflection on the social impact of these four properties, the course focuses on the consequences of these changes for the study of society and communication.

During the course students will gain knowledge on how to find, store and analyze the conversations taking place on Twitter and Facebook.

Specifically the course of this year will be dedicated to the analysis of conversations prompted by news storie shared on social media.

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understand the opportunities and challenges that social media pose to social research, learn about the Twitter API and Facebook, about platforms and techniques for capturing data from Twitter and Facebook, to know the techniques of content analysis

The teaching material prepared by the lecturer in addition to recommended textbooks (such as for instance slides, lecture notes, exercises, bibliography) and communications from the lecturer specific to the course can be found inside the Moodle platform › blended.uniurb.it

See http://blendend.uniurb.it

Teaching

Lecture, in class discussion and project work

Attendance

3/4 of classes and project work

Course books

Bennato, D. (2015). Il computer come macroscopio: Big data e approccio computazionale per comprendere i cambiamenti sociali e culturali. Milano: Franco Angeli.

Allport, G. W., & Postman, L. (1946). AN ANALYSIS OF RUMOR. Public Opinion Quarterly,10(4), 501–517. http://doi.org/10.1093/poq/10.4.501

Bakshy, E., Messing, S., & Adamic, L. A. (2015). Political science. Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook. Science, 348(6239), 1130–1132. http://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa1160

Assessment

Oral exam and discussion of project work

Disability and Specific Learning Disorders (SLD)

Students who have registered their disability certification or SLD certification with the Inclusion and Right to Study Office can request to use conceptual maps (for keywords) during exams.

To this end, it is necessary to send the maps, two weeks before the exam date, to the course instructor, who will verify their compliance with the university guidelines and may request modifications.

Teaching

-

Attendance

-

Course books

Bennato, D. (2015). Il computer come macroscopio: Big data e approccio computazionale per comprendere i cambiamenti sociali e culturali. Milano: Franco Angeli.

Allport, G. W., & Postman, L. (1946). AN ANALYSIS OF RUMOR. Public Opinion Quarterly, 10(4), 501–517. http://doi.org/10.1093/poq/10.4.501

A. Bessi, M. Coletto, G.A. Davidescu, A. Scala, G. Caldarelli, and W. Quattrociocchi. Science vs conspiracy: collective narratives in the age of (mis)information. Plos ONE (2015).

Bakshy, E., Messing, S., & Adamic, L. A. (2015). Political science. Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook. Science, 348(6239), 1130–1132. http://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa1160

Assessment

Oral exam

Disability and Specific Learning Disorders (SLD)

Students who have registered their disability certification or SLD certification with the Inclusion and Right to Study Office can request to use conceptual maps (for keywords) during exams.

To this end, it is necessary to send the maps, two weeks before the exam date, to the course instructor, who will verify their compliance with the university guidelines and may request modifications.