Undergrads – New Fall Course Network Data and Methods

The Sociology Department is offering a new course this Fall quarter- SOCI 102  Network Data and Methods  which will be taught by Professor Kevin Lewis.  Course description: When we hear the word “social network,” we tend to think about contemporary social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn. But social network analysis as a sociological method existed long before the creation of the internet. Rather than viewing society as an aggregation of individuals, social network analysts focus on relationships between people as the central unit of analysis. This course will provide students with an introduction to social network analysis as a method of social scientific inquiry. Students will learn how to design a network study; collect, analyze, and visualize network data; and use these methods to answer an original sociological research question. In short, this class is something of a methodological complement to SOCI 122 (though either class can be taken independently of the other); while students in SOCI 122 learn about social network research, students in SOCI 102 learn the basics of how to conduct this research themselves.