What is it about computational communication science?

Today, Emese Domahidi (Assistant Professor at TU Ilmenau) and Mario Haim (Assistant Professor at the U of Leipzig) discuss together with Valerie Hase (Research and Teaching Assistant at the U of Zurich) ways, approaches, guidelines, and routes to get started with computational communication science (CCS). We talk learning materials, compare intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, provide ideas and suggestions on where and how to find help and companions, and we tell our very own stories of how we got started with CCS.

Conferences, Divisions, & Working Groups

http://ic2s2.org/

- https://twitter.com/IC2S2

https://www.icahdq.org/group/compmethds

- https://twitter.com/ica_cm

- Slack channel via https://twitter.com/fe_loe/status/1395020548019720193

https://www.dgpuk.de/de/methoden-der-publizistik-und-kommunikationswissenschaft.html

- https://twitter.com/dgpuk_meth

https://www.cssmethods.uzh.ch/en.html

https://cssamsterdam.github.io/

https://tadapolisci.slack.com

Journals

https://computationalcommunication.org/ccr

https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/hcms20/current

References

van Atteveldt, W., Trilling, D., & Arcila Calderon, C. (2021). Computational analysis of communication. Wiley Blackwell. https://cssbook.net/

Wickham, H., & Grolemund, G. (2017). R for Data Science: Import, tidy, transform, visualize, and model data. O'Reilly.

Summer Schools

https://github.com/chkla/css-schools

https://essexsummerschool.com/

https://sicss.io/

https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/DmiAbout

Introductory Tutorials

https://www.tidytextmining.com/

https://tutorials.quanteda.io/

https://content-analysis-with-r.com/

https://bookdown.org/joone/ComputationalMethods/

https://tm4ss.github.io/docs/

https://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/socialsciencedatalab/article/advancing-text-mining/

https://bookdown.org/ndphillips/YaRrr/

https://r4ds.had.co.nz/

In the second episode Emese Domahidi (Assistant Professor at TU Ilmenau) and Mario Haim (Assistant Professor at the U of Leipzig) discuss with Wouter van Atteveldt (Associate Professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) the role of communication science in the field. Main topics are the nature and role of data for the social sciences and challenges in collaborations with computer scientists. We touch on topics like open science, reproducibility and replicability for computational communication science and whether we need a cultural change to achieve these goals. Last but not least we talk about a new book Computational Analysis of Communication that Wouter co-edited with Damian Trilling and Carlos Arcila.

References

Lazer, D., Pentland, A. (Sandy), Adamic, L., Aral, S., Barabasi, A. L., Brewer, D., Christakis, N., Contractor, N., Fowler, J., Gutmann, M., Jebara, T., King, G., Macy, M., Roy, D., & Van Alstyne, M. (2009). Life in the network: The coming age of computational social science. Science (New York, N.Y.), 323(5915), 721–723. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1167742

Roberts, M. E., Stewart, B. M., & Tingley, D. (2019). stm: An R Package for Structural Topic Models. Journal of Statistical Software, 91(2), 1–40. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v091.i02

van Atteveldt, W., Trilling, D., & Arcila, C. (in press). Computational Analysis of Communication. Wiley Blackwell. Book homepage: https://cssbook.net/

In this first-ever episode, Emese Domahidi (Assistant Professor at TU Ilmenau) and Mario Haim (Assistant Professor at the U of Leipzig) discuss the relevance of a social-scientific perspective in the computer-scientifically driven field of artificial intelligence. We briefly dig into Kate Crawford's recent book (https://www.katecrawford.net/) as well as the European Union's "Guidelines for Trustworthy AI." And we compare rather distinct understandings of relevance when it comes to a computational perspective within communication science. All of this accumulates in the introduction of our new podcast in which we will tackle the urgent questions of CCS. 

References

Crawford, K. (2021). Atlas of AI. Yale University Press.

EU Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/ethics-guidelines-trustworthy-ai

Fuchs, C., & Qiu, J.L. (2018). Ferments in the field: Introductory reflections on the past, present and future of communication studies. Journal of Communication, 68(2), 219-232. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqy008

van Atteveldt, W., & Peng, T.-Q. (2018). When communication meets computation: Opportunities, challenges, and pitfalls in computational communication science. Communication Methods and Measures, 12(2–3), 81–92. https://doi.org/10.1080/19312458.2018.1458084

What is it about Computational Communication Science?

As "big data" and "algorithms" affect our daily communication, lots of new research questions arise at the intersection between societies and technologies, asking for human wellbeing in times of permanent smartphone usage or the role of huge platforms for our news environment. The growing discipline of Computational Communication Science (CCS) takes on a combinatory perspective between social and computer science. In this podcast, Emese Domahidi (@MissEsi) and Mario Haim (@DrFollowMario) open this discussion for students and young scholars, one guest and one question at a time.

Credits

Artwork: Kristina Schneider (@kriesse)

Sounddesign: Nico van Capelle

Exciting background music in the beginning from musicfox.com