Lead supervisor:
Prof Matthew Williams 
Start date: October 2015
Award: General
Subject Pathway:
Criminology and Law
Thematic Cluster:
Rights and Governance Cluster
The Collaborative Online Social Media Observatory (COSMOS) and Crowd-Sourcing Social Sensing for Statistical Modelling
This project will use the Collaborative Online Social Media Observatory (COSMOS) as a means to collect “big data” and explore its application in sociological research. Providing both advantages and pitfalls when compared to traditional research methods, the ubiquity of online social information provides a vast arena in which to conduct research, and its unique value and function as an augmentation to traditional research, a replacement or something different all together, will be a focus of this project.