What we are reading: Comparative survey data, random effects and some best practice tips

Working with repeated comparative survey data – almost a howto There is now a bonanza of studies that rely on surveys which are replicated across countries and time, often with fairly short intervals, with the ESS arguably one of the most prominent examples (but also see the “barometer” studies in various regions). Multi-level analysis is…

Cloud computing and backups

I began putting stuff on the internet for fun and non-profit at some point in the previous millennium. In 2008, almost exactly 13 years ago, I registered this domain. After eight years of mostly uneventful but very slow shared hosting with a tiny company somewhere in Germany’s Wild East, I upgraded to a cheapo virtual…

Teaching stats online with memes

Why yes, of course nothing says memefy just like a series of online lectures that everybody wants to fast-forward. And I have the tweets to prove it. So I’m teaching a mandatory stats/methods class (always popular). Online. Following the advice from my own kids, I have memified the outline. For your own syllabus needs, here…

Wakelet as a tool for archiving online debates on (academic) events

Wakelet – what is it, and why should academics care to “curate” tweets about events? Bear with me for a second. The sad state of curating and social story telling Until about about a year ago, there was a storify.com. Their business idea was that people would “curate” tweets, facebook posts and other stuff found…

Video: using co-citation analysis with R to assess the chances of scientific communication

Terminology matters for science. If people use different words for the same thing, or even worse, the same word for different things, scientific communication turns into a dialogue of the deaf. European Radical Right Studies are a field where this is potentially a big problem: we use labels like “New”, “Populist”, “Radical”, “Extreme” or even…