School of CS newsletter

Animation15, the 8th Annual UK Schools Computer Animation Competition was a great success, with 822 entries from 1,057 students from 127 schools across the UK. The winners were announced today - see them all at: https://www.youtube.com/user/AnimationComp/

Jock McNaught was recently quoted in a Guardian higher education network feature on copyright law and text mining:

http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2015/jun/09/call-to-unlock-a-treasure-chest-of-hidden-research-data

Kath Hopkins in the Student Support Office will be finishing work on Friday 31st July 2015 and returning to SSO on Wednesday 1st June 2016.  Ruth Maddocks in the Academic Support Office has been appointed to cover Kath’s post as Senior UG Administrator whilst she’s away on maternity leave.

140 Characters to Victory? Using Twitter To Predict The UK 2015 General Election

12:00-14:00, Lecture Theatre G7, Bridgeford Street, University of Manchester

Manchester Informatics are pleased to announce that the next highly topical event in our Social Media Seminar Series will take place on 8th July 2015.

An exciting line up of speakers featuring Rachel Gibson (University of Manchester), Rosalynd Southern (University of Manchester), Peter Burnap (University of Cardiff), Luke Sloan (University of Cardiff) and Matthew Williams (Cardiff School of Social Sciences) will present their research on Twitter Data in relation to the recent Election.

Context: The election forecasting ‘industry’ is a growing one, both in the volume of scholars producing forecasts and methodological diversity. In recent years a new approach has emerged that relies on social media and particularly Twitter data to predict election outcomes. While some studies have shown the method to hold a surprising degree of accuracy there has been criticism over the lack of consistency and clarity in the methods used, along with inevitable problems of population bias. In this research, a ‘baseline’ model was set out for using Twitter as an election forecasting tool that was then applied to the UK 2015 General Election. The paper builds on existing literature by extending the use of Twitter as a forecasting tool to the UK context and identifying its limitations, particularly with regard to its application in a multi-party environment with geographic concentration of power for minor parties.

Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

Places are limited so please click on the registration link below if you would like to join us on 8th July.

Register