Understanding the Digital Society: New Master’s Programme in Computational Social Systems

In the new inter-university master's program 'Computationals Social Systems', students acquire the necessary skills to understand digital society and to take advantage of the opportunities offered by digital transformation. Lunghammer - TU Graz By Susanne Eigner - The joint study programme of the University of Graz and TU Graz offers an interdisciplinary education at the interface of computer science, economics, sociology, psychology and law and will start in the winter semester 2021/22. How can you read collective emotions and opinions from social media data? How can the latest data science and AI technologies be ethically and constructively incorporated into politics, research and business? Can the behaviour of entire societies be simulated to make predictions? And how can analyses of digital traces of human behaviour be used responsibly and profitably? These and similar questions are the subject of the new English-language Master's programme in Computational Social Systems , which the University of Graz and Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) will offer jointly from the winter semester 2021/22. This course of study, which is unique in Austria, is aimed at students who would like to take an in-depth look at the effects of digitalization and the challenges and opportunities that go hand in hand with it. The prerequisite is a completed undergraduate degree in economics, sociology, psychology, law or computer science, as well as sufficient knowledge of English. In four semesters, students receive academic training in computer science topics such as data structures, algorithms, statistics, machine learning and data science on the one hand.