Side Meeting at the International Population Conference in Cape Town


Training workshop on

 

Social Media, Big Data and Digital Demography

 

Cape Town, South Africa, Sunday 29 October 2017, 8:30-16:00


at the Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town.

 


This training workshop is organized by the IUSSP Scientific Panel on Big Data and Population Processes
as a preconference workshop at the International Population Conference, Cape Town, South Africa, 29 October-4 November 2017.

 

 

Deadline for applications: 15 August 2017.

 

 

 

Workshop facilitator: Emilio Zagheni (University of Washington, Seattle) 


This training workshop will focus on accessing Social Media data and analyzing them with Demographic Methods. The workshop is intended to:

  • provide an introduction to tools like Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for collecting data from social media (e.g., Twitter tweets and Facebook Public Pages or Facebook Adverts Manager);
  • present examples of demographic methods that can be used to gain insights from these data and discuss recent developments in the emerging field of digital demography; 
  • favor communication and interaction among scholars and students interested in digital demography and the so-called "Data Revolution".  

 

Format:

There will be a mix of hands-on guided exercises/tutorials and introductory presentations about (i) key computational concepts as well as (ii) ongoing research projects that leverage social media data for demographic research. 

 

Prerequisites:

Participants are expected to bring their own laptops, with R and Rstudio installed.  Basic familiarity with the statistical software R is expected. For a brief tutorial/refresher about R, see https://cran.r-project.org/doc/contrib/Torfs+Brauer-Short-R-Intro.pdf

The workshop will be held in English; no translation will be provided. Participants should have a working knowledge and should be able to understand and communicate in English.

 

Registration:

The number of participants in this training course is limited to 70 people. An initial deadline for registering or applying for funding support has been set for 15 August 2017.

  • An online registration fee of 50 euros is required of participants from high-income countries to cover lunch and tea breaks. A reduced registration fee of 25 euros is requested from participants from low- and middle-income countries.
  • Limited financial support is available for participants from sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
  • 50% of places are reserved for applicants from low- and middle-income countries in low- and middle-income countries. 

 

Please click here to register for this workshop (requiring paying the registration fee).

 

Applications for funding closed on 16 August.