Introduction to Social Networks

Catalog description

Course Description What makes a recommendation system on social media effective? Why do YouTube mega-influencers with tens of millions of subscribers exist, yet we have not heard of most of them? Why do echo chambers form and polarization deepen in social media platforms despite the utopian promise of the free flow of information and fluid connectivity between people that these platforms had envisioned? How do professionals land their dream jobs? How does mass adoption of technological innovations happen (e.g., Python, Bitcoin)? Underlying these seemingly unrelated questions is the powerful influence of social networks, the collection of social connections that people form on and offline. This course offers an introduction to the study of social networks as a powerful tool for understanding a wide range of questions and for solving real-world problems arising at the intersection of human social behavior and technological systems. The course first introduces network concepts and their mathematical operationalizations that give social network analysis the versatility for rigorous quantitative analysis. Students will subsequently learn how these building blocks have been applied to analyze and solve a wide range of online social phenomena. Finally, the course will introduce statistical models of networks that enable principled investigation of network formation mechanisms. Throughout this course, students will work towards a final team project that applies network concepts and measures to either (a) describe and/or explain an empirically puzzling social phenomenon with network data, (b) develop a network data collection pipeline that aims to solve a real-world problem, or (c) build a system utiziling the insights from the course that solves a real-world problem. The following class activities throughout the course are intended to support and augment the final project.