The 2014 Digital Methods Summer Course is devoted to the remote analysis of events. There is a growing body of literature on the relationship between social media and events, often focusing on conflicts, disasters and political elections. But what do events look like online, and how does one follow them analytically? In this intensive summer course, students learn and develop internet research techniques for studying societal conditions and cultural change. Participants actively engage in empirical research projects, employing web-specific software tools such as scrapers and crawlers. The course concludes with an event at which the research projects are presented.

Level: PhD students and other motivated young scholars