Materials for the Data Stories module in Introduction to Digital Studies at the University of Maryland (Fall 2015).
Due: Thursday, December 10 at 5pm.
Your final exercise for the course is to use Google Sheets with the TAGS plug-in to collect data from Twitter and tell a short "data story" about the data you have collected. You will be working with a partner from a single shared data set; however, you will EACH BE SUBMITTING YOUR OWN INDIVIDUAL DATA STORY.
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With your partner, decide on a data set to collect. You might choose a particular individual or Twitter account, or a hashtag, or phrase or term. Regardless, put some thought into what you want to collect, and if the data doesn't seem sufficiently "interesting" don't hesitate to try something else instead. In many ways, the decision of what to collect is the most important part of the assignment.
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Explore the data using whatever spreadsheet functions you wish as well as the TAGS Explorer tool. What does the data seem to show? What are some possible explanations for what you see? Just as importantly, what isn't ascertainable from the data? Each member of the team should write their own data story, between 500-1000 words in length. Don't try to summarize all of the data. Just pick one thread and follow it through, telling us what might account for the conclusions you wish to draw and what the limits of those insights are. You may reference Pasquale or other readings if it seems helpful, but your focus should be on your data set, not responding to the readings.
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Finally--and critically--please add the URL for your TAGS spreadsheet to your data story. If you have trouble doing this feel free to share your spreadsheet with Ed and Matt at these addresses: ehs@pobox.com, mkirschenbaum@gmail.com. Writing your data story here (each of you) and sharing the sheet via Google completes the Exercise.
To create your data story first fork this repository, and then use the New File button near the top of the screen to create a new file using your name as the filename: e.g. matt_kirschenbaum.md. Then edit the file as needed. You may notice that the format of the page is Markdown. Feel free to use markdown in your data story if you want. When you are done try to send a pull request so your changes can be merged into the master repository. If you run into trouble feel free to email Ed