Big Data and Digital Futures is also offered as a Postgraduate Diploma: 9 months (full-time), 18 months (part-time) on the MSc pro-rata fee basis.
Increasingly, big data are used to track and trace social trends and behaviours. In turn, governments, business and industries worldwide are rapidly recruiting graduates who can understand and analyse big data. This course addresses how big data challenge traditional research processes, and impact on security, privacy, ethics, and governance and policy. You will learn practical and theoretical data skills, both in quantitative methods and the wider theoretical implications about how big data are transforming disciplinary boundaries.
You will take three core modules and a dissertation. Three option modules (see below) allow further specialisation. Lab work, report writing, data skills training and guest lectures by industry experts will form an integral part of your learning experience. You will be invited to attend short certified ‘Masterclasses’ to further extend your methodological repertoire. An annual Spring Camp on a key theme (e.g. health; networks; food) is also provided, allowing you to gain expertise in a wide range of cutting-edge quantitative methods.
You don’t need a computer science, mathematics or statistics background to apply. The focus is on conducting and understanding applied quantitative social science, so a willingness to engage with real world social science issues is essential.
Core modules:
- Big Data Research: Hype or Revolution?
- Principles in Quantitative Research
- Advanced Quantitative Research
- Dissertation
Masters Optional Modules:
Visualisation; Social Informatics; Big Data Research: Hype or Revolution?; Complexity in the Social Sciences; Media and Social Theory; Digital Sociology; Post Digital Books; User Interface Cultures: Design, Method and Critique; Playful Media: Ludification in the Digital Age.
Optional modules from other departments may be considered as part of your degree programme. Should you wish to undertake an outside option, you will need to discuss this with the Masters Convenor.
Please note: not all optional modules may be available each year; you should therefore check with the Centre. New modules or modules named may be amended or advertised for the next academic year.
Assessment: A combination of essays, reports, design projects, technical report writing, practice assessments, group work and presentations and an individual research project.
Course Laptops: All students on CIM degrees are given a laptop to use.
