SICSS-Accra

12:00-23:00 Arrivals

09:00-13:00 Welcome to SICSS-Accra

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-16:00 Introduction to Computational Social Science

Required Readings:

• Computational social science and sociology
• Computational social science: Obstacles and opportunities
• Leveraging digital and computational demography for policy insights
• Digital and computational demography
• Demography in the digital era: New data sources for population research

16:00-18:00 Tutorial: R for CSS

18:00- Dinner

09:00-09:15 Housekeeping and Announcements.

09:15-10:30 Research Happy Hour

Required Readings:

• North and South: Naming practices and the hidden dimension of global disparities in knowledge production
• The demography of the peripatetic researcher: Evidence on highly mobile scholars from the Web of Science
• Global patterns of migration of scholars with economic development
• A bibliometric analysis of COVID-19 research in Africa
• A bibliometric analysis of childhood immunization research productivity in Africa since the onset of the Expanded Program on Immunization in 1974

10:30-11:30 An Introduction to Bibliometrics

11:30-13:00 Tutorials

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-16:30 Group Exercises

16:30-17:00 Announcements

17:00- Dinner

09:00-09:15 Housekeeping and Announcements.

09:15-10:30 Research Happy Hour

Required Readings:

• Can a 280-character message explain stock returns? Evidence from South Africa
• Characterising different communities of Twitter users: Migrants and natives
• Comparing and combining sentiment analysis methods
• Twitter-mediated enterprise–customer communication: Case of electricity distribution services in a developing country
• Systematic delineation of media polarity on COVID-19 vaccines in Africa: Computational linguistic modeling study

10:30-13:00 Tutorials

• An Introduction to Text Analysis Watch video on Youtube, Slides, Annotated Code
• Text Analysis Basics Watch video on Youtube, Slides, Annotated Code
• Dictionary-Based Text Analysis Watch video on Youtube, Slides, Annotated Code
• Topic Models Watch video on Youtube, Slides, Annotated Code

13:00-14:00 Invited Talk: Emotional Reactions Towards Vaccination During the Emergence of the Omicron Variant: Insights from Twitter Analysis in South Africa

14:00-15:00 Lunch

15:00-16:30 Group Exercises

16:30-17:00 Announcements

17:00- Dinner

09:00-09:15 Housekeeping and Announcements

09:15-10:30 Research Happy Hour

Required Readings:

• A scoping review on the use of machine learning in research on social determinants of health: Trends and research prospects
• Predicting the vulnerability of women to intimate partner violence in South Africa: Evidence from tree-based machine learning techniques
• Using Machine learning algorithms to predict the state of financial inclusion in Africa
• Use of machine learning techniques to identify HIV predictors for screening in sub-Saharan Africa
• Machine learning algorithms for predicting undernutrition among under-five children in Ethiopia

10:30-11:00 GeNorms: ML

10:30-11:00 Flash Talk: Can we Predict Artistic Success?

11:30-13:00 Tutorial: Machine Learning for Beginners

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-16:30 Group Exercises

16:30-17:00 Announcements

17:00- Dinner

09:00-09:15 Housekeeping and Announcements.

09:15-10:15 Research Happy Hour

Required Readings:

• Using search queries to understand health information needs in Africa
• Modeling COVID-19 incidence with Google Trends
• Google trends and water conservation awareness: the internet’s contribution in South Africa

10:15-11:15 Predicting the Present with Google Trends

11:15-13:00 Tutorial

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-15:30 Research Happy Hour

Required Readings:

• Characterizing low effort responding among young African adults recruited via Facebook advertising
• Evaluating sampling biases from third-party reporting as a method for improving survey measures of sensitive behaviors
• Using an online sample to estimate the size of an offline population
• Collecting data on HIV-related mortality during household surveys: a randomized validation study in Malawi
• YouTube videos: Survey Research in the Digital Age, Probability and Non-Probability Sampling, Combining Surveys and Big Data, Moving Beyond Simple Experiments

15:30-17:00 Group Exercises/Announcements

17:00- Dinner

09:00-09:15 Housekeeping and Announcements.

09:15-10:00 An introduction to SICSS-Accra group projects.

10:00-13:00 Group Exercises

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-15:30 Tutorial: Introduction to Spatial Data and Leaflet Mapping in R [Slides & Annotated Code]

This workshop introduces the sf package and creating interactive maps using the javascript library leaflet in R. At the end of the course, participants will become familiar with the basic types of spatial data and how to check the coordinate reference system using the sf package in R. Participants will also learn how to:

• Build a static map using sf and ggplot2 using geom_sf.
• Build a chloropleth map and map with points in R using the javascript library leaflet.
• Customise a plot by changing the background tile, polygon colours and fill and adding pop up labels.

15:30-17:00 Group Exercises

17:00- Dinner

09:00-09:15 Housekeeping and Announcements.

09:15-13:00 Group Exercises

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-15:00 Flash talk: Health-information seeking behaviour during COVID-19.

15:00-17:00 Group Exercises

17:00- Dinner

09:15-13:00 Group Exercises

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-15:00 Flash talk:

15:00-17:00 Group Exercises

17:00- Dinner

09:15-13:00 Group Exercises

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-15:00 Flash talk:

15:00-17:00 Group Exercises

17:00- Dinner

09:15-13:00 Open and reproducible computational social science research.

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-17:00 Flash talks: SICSS-Accra group projects.

17:00- Dinner and goodbye