Sociology & social network analysis

This course extends insights of earlier courses, such as ‘Introduction Psychology & Technology’ in the sense that it takes in a broader societal perspective: we examine how the broader social context (e.g., social networks, norms and other community characteristics) affects the use of technology by humans and how technology use, in turn, affects society. The course introduces research on social networks and social media, both of which gain an increasing relevance for HTI research. Exemplary problems to be covered are: How do you get individuals to accept new ideas or technologies? How do you get people to collaborate on the internet and especially in social media? Social networks are becoming more and more important for solving these problems.

After this course, students are able to:

• describe the main questions, important concepts, and most important insights of different sociological research traditions applied to new technologies.
• identify social network theories about the diffusion of innovations.
• apply sociological theories to problems of ICT, social media design, and their social consequences and pre-conditions of use.
• design socio-technical solutions, based on the theoretical analysis of a problem.
• re-construct important arguments and theories and to develop basic theoretical arguments about technology design, technological innovations and especially ICT.
• analyse the latest questions about diffusion and use of ICT and social media as refinements of earlier sociological research in related areas.
• develop critical arguments about technology design recommendations and their desirable and undesirable social consequences.
• use R-Igraph to visualize networks.
• calculate and interpret centrality measures.
• calculate and interpret social cohesion measures.
• simulate a network diffusion process.
• apply a network intervention based on a simulation of a network diffusion process.

You must meet the following requirements

• Registered for a degree programme other than
• HBO-TOP Applied Physics, Pre-Master
• Completed none of the course modules listed below
• Behavorial research methods 1 (0HPH05)
• Behavorial & social theories of HTI (0HSUB0)
• Risk, trust and social media (0LSUB0)
• HTI in social context (0HV80)

• Journal articles, State of the art and overview article and texts