King's College London - Faculty of Arts & Humanities

MA in Big Data in Culture & Society

This Big Data in Culture and Society MA will teach you to examine how the data generated in our everyday lives is shaping social, cultural, political and economic processes and generating knowledge. It focuses not only on the technical dimensions of data, data processing, artificial intelligence, machine learning and beyond, but on the social aspects, too.

You will study a research-driven, multidisciplinary curriculum taught by scholars and active researchers at the leading edge of digital studies and Big Data. You’ll learn how to programme so that you can gather your own data, analyse, make use of emerging machine learning and AI tools, all to conduct independent research. You will also get an understanding of how legal systems and policies affect data and artificial intelligence with a compulsory module taught by the Dickson Poon School of Law.

Key benefits

• Discover how to critically and theoretically analyse Big Data to consider its effects on contemporary society.
• Read a range of disciplines to examine how Big Data relates to culture, law and ethics, geography, public health, and social life.
• Learn from scholars working at the leading edge of digital studies and big data.
• Study with data scientists and analysts to learn collaborative practices and applications in social media and cultural analytics, mobile platforms, and data visualisation.
• Develop theoretical and practical skills that are highly desired by digital employers.
• Join a Digital Humanities Department that’s the largest in the UK and a global leader in researching digital culture.

Course essentials

This master’s in Big Data in Culture and Society will teach you how to analyse Big Data across social, political and economic areas, thanks to its multidisciplinary curriculum.

There are four compulsory modules for this MA. You’ll begin by exploring the theories and concepts of Big Data and looking at debates on how this topic relates to digital culture and society. This will lay your foundational understanding of how we generate data in our day-to-day life and how that information is gathered and processed.

With the key concepts mastered, you’ll move on to learning about the tools, methods and practices of Big Data from active researchers in the field. One series of co-laboratories will teach you the necessary practical skills to drill down further into the data, while another will introduce you to essential topics such as social media and cultural analytics, data visualisation, hacking the mobile system for data and big humanities and heritage.

You will then spend a whole module learning how to use computational methods to analyse digital cultural and social objects. You’ll be taught how to use the programming language R to write your own code. By the end, you will be able to extract data, prepare datasets, and present them through data visualisations and summary tables.

The compulsory modules come to a close with a final one on Big Data and the Law. You’ll get an understanding of the laws and policies that touch upon Big Data and AI, covering topics such as GDPR, surveillance, data privacy, cybercrime, and Contract Law, as well as the ethical and governance challenges.

You also get the opportunity to choose a couple of optional modules and specialise further. You could focus on Big Data and society by learning about AI in society, and music and sound in digital societies or explore digital storytelling and digital journalism. Alternatively, you could choose to study communication and consumption of cultural heritage, digital asset and media management technologies, web technologies, or much more.

You will graduate from this master’s in Big Data in Culture and Society with a deep understanding of how data is gathered and processed, how it can be manipulated, analysed and presented, and the legal, ethical and governance challenges of this topic. You’ll also know how to programme in R and apply this skill to generate your own research and produce a dissertation.

The course will provide you with:

• Knowledge and understanding of the effects of Big Data on contemporary society.
• Critical and theoretical approaches to the analysis of Big Data.
• Knowledge of the historical antecedents of Big Data.
• Understanding of the innovative methods for generating new knowledge through the use and analysis of Big Data.
• Understanding of Big Data in relation to the broader study of digital culture, the digital humanities and traditional humanities disciplines.
• Understanding of appropriate personal and professional conduct in the context of digital culture as an emerging discipline.