Course Description
Computational Social Science, CMN 150V
Nontechnical survey of modern computational research methods. Web scraping, artificial intelligence, visualizing social networks, and computer simulations. Hands-on use of diverse software applications. Professors from all ten UC campuses contribute.
Key Information
Credit: 4 quarter units /
2.67 semester units credit
UC Davis, COMM
Course Credit:
Upon successful completion, all online courses offered through cross-enrollment provide UC unit credit. Some courses are approved for GE, major preparation and/or, major credit or can be used as a substitute for a course at your campus.If "unit credit" is listed by your campus, consult your department, academic adviser or Student Affairs division to inquire about the petition process for more than unit credit for the course.
UC Berkeley:
Unit Credit
UC Davis:
General Education: QL & SS
Major Requirement: required course for the Communication Major
UC Irvine:
Unit Credit
UC Los Angeles:
Unit Credit
UC Merced:
Unit Credit (see your Academic Advisor)
UC Riverside:
General Education: Elective units
UC San Diego:
General Education: ERC Formal Skills; TMC 1 course toward upper division disciplinary breadth if noncontiguous to major; Revelle: None; Sixth - None; Muir: one course in a Natural Science theme in "Computing and Logic"
Major Requirement: The Cognitive Science department at UC San Diego has approved CMN 150V from UC Davis to count as an upper-division elective towards the Machine Learning & Neural Computation Specialization.
UC San Francisco:
Unit Credit
UC Santa Barbara:
General Education: This course will apply to Area D automatically upon completion
Major Requirement: This course is likely applicable for 4 units of upper-division Communication major credit by petition. Consult the Communication Department with questions.
UC Santa Cruz:
General Education: PE-T
Major Requirement: Sociology: Can be used as an elective course substitution. Can be used as an upper-division elective for the Methods, Skills & Humanities-informed Analysis "context" for the Global and Community Health B.A.
More About The Course
Digital technology has not only revolutionized society, but also the way we can study it. For one, studying the massive digital footprint behind left behind by human online interaction allows us to gain unprecedented insights into what society is and how it works. This includes its intricate social networks that had long been obscure. Computational power allows us to detect hidden patterns through analytical tools like machine learning and to natural language processing. Finally, computer simulations enable us to explore hypothetical situations that may not even exist in reality, but that we would like to exist: a better world. Computational social science provides us with the tools to explore new scenarios in a way that is as intriguing as playing a video game, while at the same time grounding it into the empirical reality of the world around us. This course gives an introduction to some of the exciting possibilities of how to do research.
UCCSS (University of California Computational Social Science) is the first online course taught collectively by Professors from all 10 UC campuses About UCCSS . A selection of its content is also available as a certified Specialization at the Massive Open Online Course platform Coursera, where ClassCentral selected it as a top-100 "best online courses of ALL TIMES", attracting over 60,000 learners already.
While no formal requisites are necessary to join this course, at the end you will web-scrape 'Big Data' from the web, execute a social network analysis ('SNA'), find hidden patterns with machine learning ('ML') and natural language processing ('NLP'), and create agent-based computer models ('ABM') to explore what might happen if we would change certain things in society. The only requirement is a working computer/laptop (but this is a general UC Davis requirement).
Course Creator
Martin Hilbert
Prof. Hilbert chairs the campus-wide emphasis on Computational Social Sciences at UC Davis, where he studies the implications of digitalization in complex social systems. He holds doctorates in Economic and Social Sciences (2006), and in Communication (2012). His work is recognized in academia for the first study that assessed how much information there is in the world; in public policy for having designed the first digital action plan of Latin America and the Caribbean at the United Nations; and in the popular media for having alerted about the intervention of Cambridge Analytica in the campaign of Donald Trump a year before the scandal broke. Before he joined academia he served as Economic Affairs Officer of the United Nations Secretariat for 15 years, where he created the Information Society Program for Latin America and the Caribbean ( www.CEPAL.org/SocInfo). Prof. Hilbert provided technical assistance in the field of digital development to more than 20 countries and dozens of publicly traded companies as digital strategist. Policymakers from the highest political levels have officially recognized the impact of his projects in public declarations. In combination with this practical experience, he has written five books about digital development and has published in recognized academic journals, such as Science, Psychological Bulletin, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, and World Development, and regularly appears in popular magazines, including CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Economist, NPR, BBC, Die Welt, among others. International perspectives are no mere theoretical perspectives to Prof. Hilbert, as he speaks five languages and has traveled to over 70 countries.
More: www.martinhilbert.net
& https://www.youtube.com/@Prof.MartinHilbert
Prof. Hilbert chairs the campus-wide emphasis on Computational Social Sciences at UC Davis, where he studies the implications of digitalization in complex social systems. He holds doctorates in Economic and Social Sciences (2006), and in Communication (2012). His work is recognized in academia for the first study that assessed how much information there is in the world; in public policy for ...
Prof. Hilbert chairs the campus-wide emphasis on Computational Social Sciences at UC Davis, where he studies the implications of digitalization in complex social systems. He holds doctorates in Economic and Social Sciences (2006), and in Communication (2012). His work is recognized in academia for the first study that assessed how much information there is in the world; in public policy for having designed the first digital action plan of Latin America and the Caribbean at the United Nations; and in the popular media for having alerted about the intervention of Cambridge Analytica in the campaign of Donald Trump a year before the scandal broke. Before he joined academia he served as Economic Affairs Officer of the United Nations Secretariat for 15 years, where he created the Information Society Program for Latin America and the Caribbean ( www.CEPAL.org/SocInfo). Prof. Hilbert provided technical assistance in the field of digital development to more than 20 countries and dozens of publicly traded companies as digital strategist. Policymakers from the highest political levels have officially recognized the impact of his projects in public declarations. In combination with this practical experience, he has written five books about digital development and has published in recognized academic journals, such as Science, Psychological Bulletin, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, and World Development, and regularly appears in popular magazines, including CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Economist, NPR, BBC, Die Welt, among others. International perspectives are no mere theoretical perspectives to Prof. Hilbert, as he speaks five languages and has traveled to over 70 countries.
More: www.martinhilbert.net
& https://www.youtube.com/@Prof.MartinHilbert
