- Docente: Luca Pinto
- Credits: 4
- Language: Italian
- Teaching Mode: In-person learning (entirely or partially)
- Campus: Bologna
- Corso: First cycle degree programme (L) in Political, Social and International Sciences (cod. 8853)
Learning outcomes
The student, thanks to a laboratory activity selected from those that will be activated from year to year, develops transversal skills in the practical elaboration of the knowledge acquired in the course of study. She/He knows how to collect, organise and analyse complex information and present the results of their analyses in written and oral form.
Course contents
The laboratory provides a practical introduction to the main empirical tools used in political science to analyse electoral competition, with particular attention to the measurement of party positions and the construction of political space.
Following a brief theoretical introduction to spatial models of electoral competition, salience theory, and the challenges of operationalising political concepts, students will explore different measurement strategies based on the analysis of political texts, manual coding, expert surveys, and automated approaches.
Particular attention will be devoted to the comparison between human judgement and computational methods, including automated text analysis, machine learning, and Large Language Models (LLMs). The laboratory will also provide a basic introduction to the use of R for data management, restructuring, and analysis.
Practical activities will include the coding of political texts, the design and completion of an expert survey, the use of LLMs for annotation tasks, and the comparison of human coding, expert-based data, and outputs generated by automated methods.
By the end of the laboratory, students will be able to critically assess different strategies for measuring political space, evaluating their advantages, limitations, reliability, and comparability.
Readings/Bibliography
Foreign students are invited to contact the teacher at the beginning of the course to discuss about the programme.
Teaching methods
Lectures and computer-based practical exercises with teacher-led activities.
Assessment methods
For the purposes of the students' final assessment, the following elements will be considered:
- Participation and cooperation in the proposed classroom activities;
- Take-home exam.
Teaching tools
Slides, dataset, scripts, replication data.
Office hours
See the website of Luca Pinto