DESCRIPTION:
This course focuses on how social groups form and evolve, how membeOArs of these groups interact with each other, and how these groups are supported and augmented with computer systems. The course is interdisciplinary, drawing from the fields of computer science, psychology, and sociology. It covers key theories and technologies of social computing in terms of (1) computer systems supporting social behavior and (2) socially intelligent computing carried out by groups. Students will have a chance to explore social computing systems, get experience with social data analyses and focus on design, and evaluation of a social software as their final project for the course.
COURSE FORMAT:
To address the pandemic circumstance, this course is designed following the flipped classroom model; i.e. lectures are going to be recorded and available online for you to watch. Every week we will meet for 1 hour during the class time for dicussion of concepts in the lectures and interaction around activites, assignments, and the project. The recorded lectures will be broken down into smaller topics to reduce the size of the recording to not more than 15 minutes. You can attend the synchronous component of the class online but there is also a physical room dedicated to this class for those who would like to be present with other students. As the instructor, I will be joining the class online through zoom. Lecture recordings include activities that will be graded and are considered the in-class activities portion of your grade.
PREREQUISITES:
This course does not assume any particular prerequisites. However, this is a graduate course which assumes critical thinking, desire to learn and being challenged with new topics, and hard work.
TEXT:
We will be reading excerpts from a large number of books and articles. Links to electronic copies are provided.
GRADING:
- In-videos activities [15 points]: the activities will be embedded in recorded lecture materials
- 3 Quizzes [15 points]: Social network analysis, social capital, Recommender systems
- Readings and reading summaries [20 points]: this is an individual assignment and involves two reading topics. Each reading assignment will include reading at least two papers, synthesize them and provide a summary of the papers as a short presentation
- Social data analysis assignment [15 points]: this is a group assignment
- Final project [35 points]
OFFICE HOUR:
Email or online meetings by appointment:
- Instructor email: rfarzan at pitt dot edu
- TA email (Nuray Baltaci): NUB2 at pitt dot edu
TOPICS TO BE COVERED:
- Social software
- Social computing technologies
- Social information processing
- Human computation and collective intelligence
- Social capital
- Design of Online communities: Socialization of newcomers; Encouraging participation
- Social Computing Research Methodologies
- Visualization and sense making
- Social computing and crisis
- Social computing ethics
Readings:
Reading 1: Social software - individual and social impact
- Yu, R. P., Ellison, N. B., & Lampe, C. (2018). Facebook use and its role in shaping access to social benefits among older adults. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 62(1), 71-90. [PDF]
- Enikolopov, R., Petrova, M., & Zhuravskaya, E. (2019). Political Effects of the Internet and Social Media. [PDF]
Reading 2: collective intelligence
- Hecht, B., & Terveen, L. (2017). The Role of Human Geography in Collective Intelligence. Collective Intelligence. [PDF]
- Arif, A., Robinson, J. J., Stanek, S. A., Fichet, E. S., Townsend, P., Worku, Z., & Starbird, K. (2017, February). A closer look at the self-correcting crowd: Examining corrections in online rumors. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM conference on computer supported cooperative work and social computing (pp. 155-168). [PDF]
SYLLABUS:
| # | Date | Topic | Details | Recordings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2020-08-19 | Introduction and overview | Course logistics and requirements Overview of what social computing is about and what you will learn in this course | Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4 |
| 2 | 2020-08-26 | Social software | What is social software? What are examples of social software? What should we know about social software | Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4 |
| 3 | 2020-09-02 | Distributed collaboration | Computer supported collaboration tools Content sharing Open source software development Project ideas due | Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5 |
| 4 | 2020-09-09 | Social Networks and Social Network Analysis | Networks: definition, metrics Social networks: Design, Technology, Features, and Impacts Social networks: Why and How Reading 1 due | Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5 |
| 5 | 2020-09-16 | Social computing research methods and research ethics | Data collection Data analysis Usability studies Conducting research on the Internet Privacy IRB Project proposal due | Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5Part 6 |
| 6 | 2020-09-23 | Analysis of social data | Collecting social traces: How and Why Wikipedia APIs Quiz 1: Social network analysis | Part 1Part 2Part 3 |
| 7 | 2020-09-30 | Social data analysis | Visualization Sense-making | Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4Part 5 |
| 8 | 2020-10-07 | Project progress report | In-class presentation of developed project idea, progress report, and feedback on your projects |