Handbook

Data and its rhetoric are all around us. The ways in which we imagine data as well as the data objects themselves have a profound impact on the ways in which the world is organised, how resources are distributed, how we understand recent events and what we come to know as “fact” versus mere “opinion”. In this course you will learn to both produce and critically analyse data objects. In addition to practicing data extraction, analysis and visualisation, you will learn how to evaluate the multiple examples of data that you encounter “in the wild” – data that are used by the media, by governments and civil society to explain and organise the world around you. By the end of the course, you will have gained a solid introduction to the processes involved in working with data and an ability to reflect on current debates about the impact of data on society.