Center for Informed Democracy & Social - cybersecurity (IDeaS)

Every dataset has a story. In this class, youre the data detective. Youll learn to reassemble the weird casts of algorithms, data miners, researchers, data janitors, pirates, data brokers, financiers, etc. whose activities shape culture. Youll encounter a range of farm to table data stories, some going back hundreds of years, and develop resources and strategies for contextual research. Youll explore cases such as the London cholera epidemic, Google Books, Netflix, the Oxford English Dictionary, the Strava map, and the Queen Nefertitiscan alongside several pieces of art and fiction that capture aspects of data stories typically obscured elsewhere. The research methods youll encounter will include book history, media archeology, history of information, infrastructure studies, ethnography, narratology, and digital forensics. Youll read scholarly articles, novels, journalism, and popular non-fiction, and youll develop individualized long-form research and writing projects informed by contemporary developments in data studies, journalism, and art.

PREREQUISITES

(76101) or (76102) or (76106 and 76107) or (76106 and 76108) or (76107 and 76108)

CROSS-LISTED COURSES

76314