Introduction to Computational Social Systems

David Garcia, 2021

Welcome to Introduction to Computational Social Systems! This course will cover an overview of approaches to Computational Social Systems from the perspectives of Computer Science, Sociology, Business Administration, Psychology, and Law studies. Students in this course become familiar with the interdisciplinary bridges between approaches and how current research is connecting disciplines. A successful student of this course will be able to discuss a topic in Computational Social Systems from the viewpoint of various disciplines. It takes the form of a Ringvorlesung with a weekly talk by an expert in Computational Social Systems. Talks take place in tandems of back-to-back lectures that present two related perspectives in Computational Social Systems.

Course Calendar

• Oct 4 Introduction to the course (Note: in HS 15.12!)
• Oct 11 No morning lecture
  CSS master’s program inauguration at 16:30 (register or watch online)
• Oct 18: Markus Hadler
  Digitizing Sociology: Established approaches and new digital sources
• Oct 25: David Garcia
  Digital traces in social science research: Opportunities and challenges
• Nov 8: Guilherme Maia de Oliveira Wood
  Understanding, shaping, and interacting with the human cognitive architecture
• Nov 22: Matthias Wendland
  Law by Design: Legal frameworks for human-centered socio-technical systems
• Rescheduled Nov 24th: Eduardo Veas
  Human Factors: Towards Humane Machine Interaction 10am on Webex (check teach center forum for link)
• Nov 29: Viktoria Pammer-Schindler
  Designing technologies as parts of socio-technical systems
• Dec 6: Stefan Thalmann
  The Business Perspective of Computational Social Systems
• Dec 13: Elisabeth Lex
  Data-driven user behavioral modeling: from digital trails to algorithms
• Jan 10: Student presentations
• Jan 17: Student presentations
• Jan 24: Student presentations and wrap-up

Location

HS10.01 on Mondays 10:45-12:45 (except the first lecture on Oct 4th, which is in HS 15.12). The location might change during the semester due to student numbers and COVID-19 restrictions, please stay tuned.

Course assessment

The course assessment is based on student group projects (max 4 students). Student groups must mix students of at least two different majors. Group name lists have to be communicated before Oct 25th to css@tugraz.at. Student projects should be developed during the course and presented in one of the last three sessions, with all students in the project participating in the presentation. Course lecturers can ask questions to the students after each presentation. By the end of the course, a short written report on the project (max 6 pages, single column, 11pt) has to be submitted. The grading scheme for the course is 50% for the presentation and 50% for the report. Two additional dates will be announced for written replacement examination dates, but we encourage students to participate in the student projects instead.

Information about student projects

Students develop a research topic for their projects, covering the necessary steps for a larger project that motivates an empirical analysis to be done in other courses (e.g. Foundations of Computational Social Systems). Parts that can be included in a project:

• Topic motivation and relevance for research and society at large
• Brief literature review on the topic
• Cases on the topic, possibly including practical examples
• Interdisciplinary considerations and differences between approaches
• Student’s position on the topic: missing research questions for future studies and possible approaches to address them

Lectures will compose a list of project topics and suggested readings by October 25th, from which the students can select project topics. You can also select your own topic for your project as long as it is clearly related to Computational Social Systems.