Content, progress and pedagogy of the module

The course combines digital methods and the anthropology of technology to map sociotechnical controversies as they unfold online or in other digital records such as the scientific literature. This module is anchored within the Department of Culture and Learning among teachers that research into techno-anthropological themes and methods.

Learning objectives

Knowledge

• describe key problems and techniques in digital methods. 
• account for theoretical approaches to contested knowledge and expertise in debates over new science and technology. 

Skills

• harvest digital traces from online sources.  
• identify actors and issues using computational techniques like visual network analysis or natural language processing. 
• investigate how digital technologies affect the way controversies unfold on different media platforms. 
• produce relevant data visualizations of positions and developments in a debate. 

Competences

• work exploratively with computational techniques and big social data as input for in-depth, qualitative analyses. 
• design and communicate a digital methods protocol.
• assess the limits and potentials of available tools and scripts for data harvest, analysis and visualization.
• tell stories and communicate findings through data visualization and narration. 

Type of instruction

Course module. Please refer to §17 of the curriculum about the structure and content of the programme.

Exam

Exams