On November 13, the Association of Central Eurasian Students hosted a Brown Bag Talk by Dr. Bence Ságvári, a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Social Science at Central European University and current Visiting Hungarian Lecturer in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at IU. This talk was titled "Beyond the Screen: Understanding Society through Digital Footprints."
Dr. Ságvári's talk focused on the challenges and benefits of analyzing social change through digital media. Dr. Bence Ságvári, visiting professor at IU and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Social Sciences in Budapest, showcased his work demonstrating the feasibility of using digital research methods to expound trends of language use, behavior, and political sentiment among platform users. The first portion of the talk explained Dr. Ságvári’s methods of data collection and analysis, as well as developments in the scope of implementation for different types of software and smartphone applications that track user metrics. The results of using data metrics through tracked user behavior and trending forms of topic-sensitive language use are significant. From migration laws and religious tolerance to gender inequality and issues of healthcare and wellness, Dr. Ságvári used applied examples to show the consistency with which a researcher can sift large aggregate data into legible patterns of behavior to understand the link between sentiment and media. In the latter half of the talk, attendees were invited to pick from a panel of sociopolitical topics presented on an array embedded in the presentation, and Dr. Ságvári demonstrated the multifaceted potential of digital research methods and data applications in each of the attendees’ choices.