Digital texts, from social media posts and online discussions to news articles and historical documents, have become an important source for research in the humanities. This course introduces students to computational thinking and cultural analytics, focusing on how digital methods can be used to analyze large collections of texts.

Students will learn how to use the Python programming language to explore and analyze textual data. Through practical exercises, they will work with methods from text mining, social media analysis, and computational discourse analysis to identify patterns, themes, and trends in digital texts. The course emphasizes hands-on learning and demonstrates how computational approaches can support research in fields such as cultural studies, linguistics, history, and media studies.

No prior programming experience is required.

In ‘The Technologies of Digital Culture’, you will learn how digital texts are made, the technologies used to do so, and how these new formats are changing the way we consume them.

What happens when I “google” something? How do the things I post on social media reflect and shape my own networks and identity? Do we control digital technologies or do they control us? How did we even get to today’s digital world? How can I leverage digital media and technologies as a positive force for science, society, and my own personal life?

In this course we will explore these and other major questions and debates surrounding the digital transformation of our societies and cultures together. Topics that will be covered in this class include an in-depth look at the history of computing, search technologies, social media, as well as key concepts such as virtual worlds, cyborgs, online economies, and digital entertainment. To do so, we will tap into a rich variety of established and new ideas and readings at the intersections of the human, social, and computational sciences.

You will not only read and hear about these topics, but also spend time thinking and talking about those aspects of digital society and culture you find especially important or interesting. We will do so through weekly discussions and production of popular scientific, digital content that you and your peers will (learn how to) make during this course. So, aside from the lectures by the instructor, your own blogs, podcasts, videos or other digital creations will form the basis of a practical and collaborative exploration of how humans make digital media and how they make us.

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In this course, students will deepen their understanding of core problems in digital humanities and gain further experience in one or more of the methodologies learned in the core courses through the development of a digital project.

With the help of the instructors, students will work on a digital humanities project from start to finish. They will choose roles depending on their interests and abilities, identify relevant literature, collect data, choose appropriate methods, analyse/visualize data and present the results. To achieve this, each week students will meet an advisor to discuss their progress and comment on each other's progress. Students will choose various sub-tasks related to the project, culminating in a co-written research paper and poster presentation.