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Please submit the slides of your pitches in CMSWritten on 07.01.26 by Annika Hass Dear students, We hope you all had great holidays and are safely back! Could you please submit the slides of your pitches in cms? Thank you and see you on Friday. Best, Annika
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Literature Research and API Usage for Course ProjectWritten on 26.12.25 by Ingmar Weber Dear all, Thanks again for your project pitches last week. Thanks to Annika, we have a dedicated MS Teams chat for each project. Let us know if you have questions specific to your project. The more specific your question the higher the chance for a timely response. For doing literature… Read more Dear all, Thanks again for your project pitches last week. Thanks to Annika, we have a dedicated MS Teams chat for each project. Let us know if you have questions specific to your project. The more specific your question the higher the chance for a timely response. For doing literature research, the first place to start is usually https://scholar.google.com/. Among other things, this also shows you other work that has cited the work you're interested in. Often, later follow-up research is also related. But one big drawback of Google Scholar is that you have to know the right terminology. Especially for interdisciplinary research this can often be difficult. So I'd also definitely suggest to supplement searches on Google Scholar with searches on Gemini, ChatGPT or similar tools. Here, you can more flexibly describe what you're interested in. For best results, use their "deep research" modes (which will take several minutes). As usual with these tools, you will have to double-check everything they report. So, if we later find a non-existing reference as you blindly copied something from ChatGPT, then you have been warned. (Still, especially in deep research mode the problem of hallucinated references has largely, but not fully disappeared.) Many of you will also want to use LLMs for annotation. In case you're access to resources at UdS or elsewhere don't cover the needs for the course project please get in touch. We can cover a small amount (up to ~EUR 50 per project) for API usage or other project-related costs. For this the easiest is if you use the OpenAI API. In this case, I'd just add to as team members to custom projects with a fixed budget (https://platform.openai.com/settings/organization/people/members). In case you really, really need a different API, then https://openrouter.ai/ is the best option. For this, please get in touch before using this. (Unfortunately, here we'd most likely have to reimburse you as we don't have a "team" set up here. So we'd have to first guarantee that you don't accidentally exceed any agreed upon quota.) I'll be back in the office on Monday, January 8, 2026. Until then my response time will be quite slow. Enjoy your holidays and all the best for 2026! Ingmar |
Final Project Presentation DatesWritten on 19.12.25 by Annika Hass Dear students, Thank you all for your pitches today! We fixed the dates for the final project presentations by rolling a die :): Jan 23rd: team 2 and 3 Jan 30th: team 1 and 4 Feb 6th: team 6 and 5 On Dec 26th and Jan 2nd, there will be no seminar. We’ll meet again on Jan… Read more Dear students, Thank you all for your pitches today! We fixed the dates for the final project presentations by rolling a die :): Jan 23rd: team 2 and 3 Jan 30th: team 1 and 4 Feb 6th: team 6 and 5 On Dec 26th and Jan 2nd, there will be no seminar. We’ll meet again on Jan 9th. Enjoy the holidays! Annika
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Course Evaluation: Please participateWritten on 15.12.25 by Till Koebe Dear all, it's not only Christmas time, it's also evaluation time. Please find below the link to the course evaluation: See… Read more Dear all, it's not only Christmas time, it's also evaluation time. Please find below the link to the course evaluation: See you soon,
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One-Pager PresentationWritten on 15.12.25 by Till Koebe Dear students, thank you for submitting the one-pagers in time! For the pitches upcoming Friday: We suggest you stick to the key questions outlined in the slides from the first session: Make sure you have (the… Read more Dear students, thank you for submitting the one-pagers in time! For the pitches upcoming Friday: We suggest you stick to the key questions outlined in the slides from the first session: Make sure you have (the feasibility of) data access sorted out. See you on Friday! Best,
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On Seminar AttendanceWritten on 29.11.25 by Till Koebe Dear students, I'd like to raise a few points on the topic of seminar attendance: 1) Be mindful of the presenting students, so please ensure you are on time. We already start 15 past, so there should be enough time to get here. 2) If you come more than 15 min late to class, it is counted as… Read more Dear students, I'd like to raise a few points on the topic of seminar attendance: 1) Be mindful of the presenting students, so please ensure you are on time. We already start 15 past, so there should be enough time to get here. 2) If you come more than 15 min late to class, it is counted as missing the class. Coming late affects your grade in class participation. Also, if you come late frequently, we consider counting it as an unexcused absence. 3) More than two unexcused absences will result in failing the seminar. Valid excuses are unforeseeable events that make attendance impossible, including sickness or unforeseeable family events. Please let us know as early as possible and provide proof, if possible. Job interviews, travels or other plannable/foreseeable events are not considered to be valid excuses. Also, please note that more than four absences (whether excused or not) will also result in failing the seminar. All the best and looking forward to seeing you all again next week,
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Reminder: Register in LSF by tomorrow!Written on 27.11.25 by Till Koebe Dear students, please ensure you **register in the LSF by tomorrow** latest for the seminar. This is a prerequisite to be credited for the seminar. See you tomorrow,
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Reminder: Pick your group!Written on 03.11.25 by Till Koebe Dear DAS students, team registration on CMS is now open. Please get together in groups of three and create a group by this Thursday, Nov 6th, end of day. If you do not have a team, please use the forum to find one and/or let us know so we can use the Friday's seminar to finalise team… Read more Dear DAS students, team registration on CMS is now open. Please get together in groups of three and create a group by this Thursday, Nov 6th, end of day. If you do not have a team, please use the forum to find one and/or let us know so we can use the Friday's seminar to finalise team formation. See you on Friday,
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Reminder: Pick your PaperWritten on 29.10.25 by Annika Hass Dear students, This is just a reminder to choose your paper for the paper presentations as a tutorial in CMS. Please do this today or tomorrow. See you all on Friday! Best, Annika
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Data and Society
From finding a mate, to booking a holiday, our lives are increasingly mediated by online platforms. Digital traces left by these interactions provide opportunities to study societal phenomena while creating challenges around the responsible use of data. In this seminar, students will learn how computational methods and machine learning can be applied to study society through such data.
The first part of the seminar will familiarize students with existing work in computational social science with each week focused on a topic such as “Digital Democracy” or “Gender Gaps” and methods to quantify it. The second part of the seminar will be about projects in which students are asked to quantify a societal phenomenon of their choice using computational methods. Here, students can both propose topics or choose from topics defined by the lecturers.
The overall course performance will be based on (i) overall course participation, (ii) assigned paper presentations, (iii) literature review and “project pitch” (prior to in-depth work) and (iv) the written project report.
Apart from learning about interdisciplinary research and applications of machine learning, students will also learn research skills such as how to read and discuss papers, how to plan a project, how to present their work, how to write a scientific paper, and how to work in teams.
Students can take this course as a seminar.
Requirements: Msc students only – the project-based element of the seminar will require some Python programming and data analysis experience. An interest beyond foundations of CS, and caring about societal problems is a must.