Date: Monday 23rd June 2014

Glasgow University is emerging as a leader in the UK in applications of Big Data analytics to questions of interest to social scientists.

This one-day workshop will bring together prominent scholars from a number of institutions to discuss the theoretical and methodological challenges associated with the use of Big Data.

Programme

10.30-10.45 Coffee & Registration

10.45-11.00 Introduction

• Sarah Birch and Philip Habel, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow

11.00-12.30 Session 1

• Chair: Chris Carman, Head of the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow
• Jonathan Nagler, New York University, ‘Leaders or Followers? Measuring Political Responsiveness in the U.S. Congress Using Social Media Data’
• Ken Benoit, London School of Economics and Political Science, ‘Crowd-sourced Coding of Political Texts’
• Pablo Barbera, New York University, ‘Issue- and Event-Specific Dynamics of Ideological Polarization’
• Discussant: Michael Lewis-Beck, University of Iowa

12.30-1.30 Lunch

1.30-3.00 Session 2

• Chair: Paul Cockshott, School of Computing Science, University of Glasgow
• Nick Bailey, Co-Director of the Urban Big Data Centre, University of Glasgow
• Iadh Ounis, Craig MacDonald and Richard Mccreadie, School of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, ‘Scalable Distributed Event Detection for Twitter’
• Iadh Ounis, Craig MacDonald and Richard Mccreadie, School of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, ‘SMARTReduce: Processing Big Data Streams in Smart City Environments’
• Brandon Valeriano, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow, ‘Working with Big Data in the Cyber Security Field: The Promise and Challenges’
• Philip Habel, ‘Who Influences Whom?: Examining Opinion Leadership and the Dissemination of Information through Social Media’
• Sarah Birch, ‘Explaining and Mitigating Electoral Violence’
• Discussant: Travis Coan, University of Exeter

3.00-3.30 Tea

3.30-5.00 Session 3

• Chair: Michele Burman, Deputy Head of the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow
• Wouter van Atteveldt, VU University Amsterdam, ‘Comparing LDA Topics to ‘Traditional’ Issues and Frames’
• Heike Kluver, University of Bamberg, and Iñaki Sagarzazu, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow, ‘Friends in Government and Foes in Elections: Political Communication Strategies of Coalition Parties’
• Michael Comerford, Policy Scotland, ‘Analysing Twitter Data in the Context of the Scottish Independence Referendum’
• Discussant: Slava Mikhaylov, University College London

For further information, contact Sarah Birch (sarah.birch@glasgow.ac.uk) or Philip Habel (philip.habel@glasgow.ac.uk)