SGIA3721: Digital Democracy

• Any Level 2 SGIA module

• None.

• None.

• The module provides an introduction to research on how digital technologies influence politics;
• The module gives students the opportunity to further develop their knowledge and skills learned in their second- and third-year modules;
• The course further trains students in quantitative methods by including training sessions on quantitative text analysis;
• The course encourages students to critically assess existing research.

• The module will examine the influence of digital technologies, such as social media, on politics. It will also discuss the risks and opportunities of the digitalisation;
• Indicative topics include:
• Campaigns and political communication.
• Mobilisation and political participation.
• Political protest.
• Polarisation.
• Online hate speech.
• Fake news and disinformation.
• E-government and smart government.
• The course will cover seminal contributions as well as cutting-edge-research. It will examine theories and their empirical tests.
• The course also provides training in quantitative text analysis using R.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Through the module students will gain an understanding of:
• Knowledge of an emerging research field in political science;
• Understanding of how digital technologies influence politics;
• Knowledge of datasets and sources on digital democracy;
• Understanding of the opportunities and challenges of digitalisation.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Students will also develop some subject specific skills, such as:
• Advanced analytical skills;
• Identify and analyse advanced literature in the field;
• Critical engagement with theories and empirical studies;
• Ability to extract hypotheses from theoretical debates and to implement an empirical test;
• Develop the ability to independently manage a research project.

Key Skills:

• Students will also develop some important key skills, suitable for underpinning study at this and subsequent levels, such as:
• Critically assess evidence and arguments;
• Effective oral and written communication of research;
• Giving feedback to peers;
• Ability to collect data from a social media platform;
• Ability to implement an analysis of social media data;
• Programming skills in R.

• Teaching and learning are through a series of 2-hour seminars.
• Formative assessment in the form of an overview and presentation allows students practice in developing their skills in formulating a coherent and logically consistent proposal ahead of the summative assessments.
• The seminars will be instructor-directed and will include a discussion of the readings focusing on the research design and methods.
• The module also includes four computer classroom sessions, which will focus on quantitative text analysis using the statistical software R. These sessions will teach students how to collect, pre-process and analyse social media data.
• Summative assessment by a 5,000-word research project. In the project, students will analyse the social media activity of parliamentarians.

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