Online Courses
Find online courses on relevant topics.
Applied Text Mining in Python
This free online course from the University of Michigan (via Coursera) teaches practical text analysis with Python. Learn NLTK, preprocessing, text classification, and topic modeling through hands-on exercises for analyzing speeches, social media, news, and other text data.
- #Python #TextMining
Citizen Politics in America: Public Opinion, Elections, Interest Groups, and the Media
This free online course by Harvard University (via HarvardX / edX) examines American electoral politics, including public opinion, parties, interest groups, and media influence. Learn how polling works, what drives voter behavior, and gain insights applicable to comparative electoral research.
- #Politics #Democracy #Elections
Comprehensive E-Learning Course for Election Observers
This free, self-paced e-learning course by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) teaches ODIHR’s election observation methodology. Learn about international standards, mission organization, and observer roles, with quizzes in each module and a certificate upon completion.
- #Elections #Politics
Council of Europe E-Learning Course for Domestic Observers
This free, self-paced course by the Council of Europe Electoral Assistance Division (via the HELP platform) trains domestic election observers and civil society on legal frameworks, observation procedures, and results monitoring. Quizzes and a certificate help build capacity for transparent and credible elections.
- #Elections #Politics
Decoded Blog
This blog by the Pew Research Center provides behind-the-scenes insights into research methods, showcasing how surveys, data analysis, and methodological approaches are applied in practice.
- #ResearchDesign #Methods #DataAnalysis
Defending Democracy against Illiberal Challenge: A RESOURCE GUIDE
The V-Dem Institute by Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) offers the Resource Guide “Defending Democracy against Illiberal Challengers”, highlighting research and strategies to strengthen democratic resilience amid autocratization and declining democratic norms.
- #Democracy #Politics
Disinformation and Deepfakes
This free online course by the Alliance of Democracies explores disinformation and deepfake threats in elections. Learn how fake news and AI-generated media can undermine electoral integrity, examine cases like foreign election interference, and discover strategies to detect and counter false narratives.
- #Democracy #NewsLiteracy #Elections
EDJNet: Training Courses, Tutorials, Walkthroughs
This beginner-friendly, self-paced course by the European Data Journalism Network (EDJNet) teaches data journalism skills, including data collection, analysis, and presentation. Participants receive mentorship, practical exercises, and the chance to develop and publish a data-driven story in collaboration with EDJNet members.
- #DataAnalysis #DataCollection #TextMining
EU Election Observation Mission E-Learning (Short-Term and Long-Term Observers)
This free, self-paced e-learning series by Election Observation and Democracy Support (EODS), European Union, prepares participants for EU Election Observation Missions. Courses cover Short- and Long-Term Observer roles, the full electoral cycle, and safety in the field, with certificates available upon completion.
- #Elections #Politics
FAIR Data 101
This free, self-guided online course by the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) introduces the FAIR principles for research data, Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. Through practical modules and exercises, learners improve data quality, transparency, and reusability in about six hours.
- #DataAnalysis #DataManagement
GESIS Guides
The GESIS Guides by GESIS provide practical, reliable guidance for conducting research with survey and digital behavioral data. Drawing on extensive experience, they offer structured information and hands-on recommendations to support evidence-based insights into socially relevant questions.
- #DigitalMethods #Survey
GESIS Methods Hub
The GESIS Methods Hub by GESIS is an open, community-driven platform offering computational methods, tools, and tutorials for social science research. It covers the full workflow, from data collection to analysis and visualization, providing code, documentation, and interactive resources for learning and reproducibility.
- #TextMining #DataAnalysis
Guide to Using Weights and Sample Design Indicators with ESS Data
This user guide by the European Social Survey (ESS) explains how to use ESS data with weights, detailing their calculation and impact on estimates. It includes practical examples of applying weights with stratification and clustering across various statistical software.
- #WeightData #Survey #ResearchDesign #Sample
Guidelines and Best Practices
This section by the Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure (CLARIN) provides an overview of training and learning guidelines and best practices, developed through EU projects like UPSKILLS and in collaboration with experts from partner research infrastructures and networks.
- #DataAnalysis #DataManagement
How Technology is Shaping Democracy and the 2020 Election
This free, self-paced 3-hour course by Stanford University (via Coursera) explores how digital tools and platforms affect elections and democracy. Using the 2020 U.S. presidential election as a case study, it examines social media, misinformation, polarization, and strategies to support electoral integrity.
- #Democracy #Elections #Politics
Information and Elections in the Digital Era
This free, on-demand MOOC by UNESCO, UNDP, and the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas (University of Texas at Austin) explores the impact of digital technologies on elections. Participants learn about disinformation, social media manipulation, AI, and strategies for transparent, inclusive electoral information through global case studies.
- #DigitalLiteracy #Elections
Introducing Open Data
A beginner-friendly e-learning module from the EU’s data.europa.eu Academy (European Union) explains what “open data” is, its benefits, and how to access and reuse it. Includes readings, videos, and webinars, fully accessible without full platform registration.
- #DataAnalysis #Methods
Introduction to Language Data: Standards and Repositories
This tutorial introduces linguistic research data management and the key services of the CLARIN research infrastructure, guiding users on efficient access, use, and handling of research data.
- #DataAnalysis #DataManagement
IPSA MOOC: Global Politics
Explore governance, democracy, elections, and communication in this free, self-paced MOOC by the International Political Science Association (IPSA) in partnership with leading universities. Open to all, it’s ideal for anyone interested in political systems and democratic monitoring.
- #Politics #Democracy
Learning materials – Working Group 2 (Tools)
These learning resources by COST Action OPINION (CA21129) support teaching in computational opinion analysis. Developed for the COST Action Training School, they provide materials from the first edition (June 2024, University of Salamanca, Spain) and preview content for the second edition (June 2025, Elbasan, Albania).
- #ComputationalMethods #DataAnalysis
Learning Resources Catalogue
The Learning Resources catalogue by the Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure (CLARIN) features open educational materials from the CLARIN community. Users can explore resources by topic, skill level, and type, supporting teaching, training, and workshop activities.
- #Politics #DataAnalysis
legislatoR
The page introduces legislatoR, an R package by the Comparative Legislators Database (CLD) for accessing and analyzing legislator data. Users can retrieve demographic and political information, explore workflows like party seat distributions or birthplace mapping, and combine, analyze, and visualize data for research purposes.
- #RCode #Democracy #DataAnalysis
Making Sense of the News: News Literacy Lessons for Digital Citizens
This free six-week online course from The University of Hong Kong & Stony Brook University (via Coursera) builds essential news literacy skills. Learn to spot misinformation, verify facts, and critically evaluate media, fostering responsible news consumption and civic engagement in the digital age.
- #DigitalLiteracy #NewsLiteracy
Mediactive: How to Participate in Our Digital World
This free, self-paced course by Arizona State University (News Co/Lab, Cronkite School of Journalism), with support from the Facebook Journalism Project, teaches digital media literacy and civic engagement. Learn to assess news, spot misinformation, and engage responsibly online, with approximately 6 hours of videos, interviews, and exercises.
- #MediaLiteracy #DigitalLiteracy
Mediateka
The media overview section of CLARIN-PL presents news, updates, and outreach materials on its activities. It showcases articles, videos, and practical examples of how researchers and organizations apply CLARIN-PL’s language technologies in digital humanities and NLP projects.
- #Media #Politics
Meteor tutorials
OPTED Meteor offers a series of practical tutorials, including a Quick Tour through Meteor, Elegant Web-Scraping: WordPress API, and Scraping Telegram: Alternative News Sources. These resources guide users in efficient data collection and analysis from diverse online platforms, providing valuable skills for research and digital investigations.
- #TextAnalysis #Democracy
Methods
Pew Research Center provides an overview of its research methods, highlighting rigorous, non-partisan approaches used to produce trusted, objective insights on a wide range of social, political, and economic topics worldwide.
- #Methods #Politics #Democracy
mit opencourseware – quantitative methods
MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) is an open online publication of teaching materials from thousands of MIT courses. Users can freely browse, download, and use lecture notes, assignments, exams, videos, and other resources at their own pace. OCW supports lifelong learning and teaching worldwide but does not provide academic credit or certification.
- #Methods #Statistics
MOOC: Democracy, Elections and Governance in Africa
This free, self-paced training by AfricTivistes (Charter Project Africa) explores democratic governance in Africa through five courses aligned with the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance. Learners gain skills in electoral cycles, civic participation, human rights, and AU engagement, with quizzes, discussions, and certificates upon completion.
- #Democracy #Elections #Politics
Navigating Misinformation: How to Identify and Verify What You See on the Web
This free, on-demand MOOC by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas (University of Texas at Austin), in collaboration with First Draft, teaches essential fact-checking and verification skills. Learn to detect misinformation in text, images, video, and social media through expert videos, readings, and exercises.
- #DigitalLiteracy #NewsLiteracy
Open Data Essentials
This free, self-paced course by the Open Data Institute (ODI) introduces open data and its societal benefits. Learn core concepts, data infrastructure, licensing, and real-world applications that drive innovation across sectors.
- #OpenData #DataAnalysis
ParlLawSpeech Tutorials
This course by ParlLawSpeech demonstrates how the ParlLawSpeech dataset links bills, parliamentary speeches, and adopted laws for legislative analysis. It offers three tutorials, on debate frequency, bill changes, and debate comparisons, featuring reproducible R code for hands-on learning.
- #RCode #DataAnalysis #Politics
Podcast ITANES: Database. Numeri, parole e analisi sull’Italia che cambia
Database by the Italian National Election Study (ITANES) is a weekly radio program on Rai GR-Parlamento. Experts analyze domestic and international news events, providing insights based on their research on current political and social phenomena.
- #Politics #Democracy
Public Opinion Polling Basics
This free, six-lesson course by the Pew Research Center introduces the fundamentals of public opinion polling. Learn how polls are conducted, sample selection, common errors, and how to evaluate credibility, ideal for understanding or conducting electoral and public-opinion surveys.
- #Questionnaire #Politics #Elections
Questionnaire Design for Social Surveys
This free, intermediate-level course by the University of Michigan (via Coursera) teaches how to design and evaluate survey questionnaires. Learn to reduce measurement errors, write clear questions, test question quality, and compare data collection methods for high-quality public opinion and electoral research.
- #Survey #ResearchDesign #DataCollection
Research Data Management and Sharing
This free-audit course by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill & University of Edinburgh (via Coursera) introduces research data management and sharing. Learn the full data lifecycle, create effective Data Management Plans, apply FAIR principles, and enhance research impact and transparency.
- #DataManagement #DataLiteracy
Resources ESS
The European Social Survey (ESS) provides access to a wide range of learning tools, shared user resources, related research, and flagship reports, offering valuable insights for students, researchers, and practitioners interested in social and political trends.
- #Methods #Survey
Securing Digital Democracy
This free, self-paced course by the University of Michigan (via Coursera), taught by Prof. J. Alex Halderman, explores the security and future of electronic and Internet voting. Learn about voting machine vulnerabilities, cybersecurity, and policy measures to protect democratic integrity in the digital era.
- #Democracy #Elections #DigitalLiteracy
Social Media Analytics: Using Data to Understand Public Conversations
This free, archived course by Queensland University of Technology (QUT) via FutureLearn teaches social media analysis, especially Twitter, without programming skills. Learn to collect, analyze, and visualize online discussions using tools like TAGS, Tableau, and Gephi, with a focus on political communication and network interpretation.
- #DigitalMethods #DataAnalysis #SocialMediaData
Spotlight on the Demscore Modules: Representative Democracy Data Archive (REPDEM)
The Representative Democracy Data Archive (REPDEM) by DEMSCORE provides data on governments, parliaments, and parties in European democracies. Students can study coalition formation, minority governments, and patterns in government formation, building on projects like ERDDA and the PAGED database.
- #Democracy #Politics
Statistical Learning
Stanford University offers courses in political methodology, covering statistical and political methods. Examples include Statistical Learning with Python, providing practical skills for analyzing political and social data using modern statistical techniques.
- #Python #DataAnalysis #Statistics #AI
Step-by-Step Instructions for DEMSCORE Data
The Demscore download instructions page by DEMSCORE provides a brief guide on using the platform’s data download interface, helping users access and retrieve datasets efficiently. Check out more on their page.
- #Democracy #Politics
Teach with Data
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) offers a range of training modules, including Navigating Restricted Data, Exploring Data with GIS, Voting Behavior Projects, Community and Social Capital, and Exploring Data through Research Literature, providing practical guidance for working with social science datasets.
- #Politics #DataAnalysis #Methods
Teaching & Learning Materials
This course by ICPSR provides guides, interactive tools, and training to help students explore real-world data. These resources are designed to make learning with data engaging, impactful, and accessible for educators and learners alike.
- #Methods #DataAnalysis
Teaching Materials and Resources for METEOR
OPTED Meteor offers an inventory of news sources that can also be used as a teaching tool in university courses. It includes training materials for coders, supporting practical learning in data collection and analysis.
- #DataAnalysis #Coding #DataCollection
Text Mining and Analytics
This free-audit course by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (via Coursera) teaches text analysis using statistical and machine-learning methods. Learn NLP fundamentals, document representation, clustering, topic modeling, and pattern discovery to analyze speeches, manifestos, social media, and news content.
- #TextMining #StatisticMethod #DataAnalysis
The Digital Humanities Course Registry
In collaboration with DARIAH-EU, the Digital Humanities Course Registry by CLARIN provides up-to-date information on DH teaching and training opportunities worldwide, helping students identify programs that match their learning needs.
- #DigitalMethods #Humanities
The impact of AI on elections and freedom of expression
This free, self-directed course by UNESCO, UNDP, and the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas (University of Texas at Austin) explores AI, freedom of expression, and elections. Learn to identify AI-generated content, address disinformation and bias, and promote ethical technology use for fair and trustworthy elections.
- #AI #Elections #Politics
The Mathematics of Democracy, Politics, and Manipulation
This free-audit, self-paced course by Johns Hopkins University (via Coursera) explores the mathematical and political foundations of electoral systems. Through eight modules, learners study voting theory, electoral systems, power indices, apportionment, and gerrymandering, with lectures, readings, and exercises to analyze representation, fairness, and manipulation in democracies.
- #Elections #Democracy #Politics
The R User Group at the Harvard Data Science Initiative
The Harvard Data Science Initiative provides scheduled sessions with descriptions, topics, and timing, along with an archive of past events, offering insights and resources for learning and applying data science methods.
- #RCode #DataAnalysis #Methods
The Vote Outside of the Box
This free, self-paced course by the Council of Europe (via HELP platform) trains electoral management bodies and stakeholders on engaging young voters. Using the Vote Outside the Box toolkit, it covers planning initiatives, raising awareness, and increasing youth participation in elections, with a six-hour completion time.
- #Elections #Politics #Democracy
Training tutorials for ParlLawSpeech
This deliverable by ParlLawSpeech offers three hands-on tutorials with transparent R code, demonstrating how to use the data in the free and open-source R environment for practical analysis.
- #RCode #DataAnalysis
Tutorial: Adding Parties’ Government/Opposition Status to the Manifesto Project Dataset using ParlGov Data
This tutorial by the Parliaments and Governments database (ParlGov) and the Manifesto Project demonstrates how to merge the Manifesto Project Dataset with cabinet composition data from ParlGov for integrated political analysis.
- #Politics #DataAnalysis #RCode
Tutorials Manifesto Project
The First Steps with manifestoR tutorial by the Manifesto Project (MARPOR / CMP) introduces the R package for accessing and analyzing party manifesto data. It covers installation, data retrieval, text and metadata handling, and basic text analysis techniques such as cleaning, subsetting, and exporting data for further research.
- #RCode #DataAnalysis
UCLA IDRE ANNOTATED OUTPUT
These sections by UCLA IDRE offer example programs with outputs and explanations, guiding users in correctly interpreting results and improving their ability to draw accurate conclusions from statistical analyses.
- #Statistics #DataAnalysis
UCLA IDRE DATA ANALYSIS EXAMPLES
These sections by UCLA IDRE provide examples of applying statistical analysis techniques across different software packages. They help users understand practical implementation and compare how methods can be executed in multiple tools.
- #Statistics #DataAnalysis
UCLA IDRE DATA ANALYSIS EXAMPLES
UCLA IDRE offers online resources on a wide range of topics and software, including STATA, SPSS, SAS, and R, supporting data analysis and research across disciplines.
- #RCode #DataAnalysis #DataManagement
Understanding the Legal Side of Open Data
This short e-learning module by data.europa.eu Academy (European Union) introduces the legal and policy aspects of open data, including licensing, intellectual property, and data protection. It is designed for data providers, civil servants, NGOs, and others, with minimal barriers to entry.
- #OpenData #DigitalLiteracy
Using DEMSCORE to Combine External Data
This course by DEMSCORE demonstrates how to combine its internal datasets with external sources. It provides a step-by-step example of aligning data with different identifiers through a common output unit, such as country-year, for seamless merging.
- #DataAnalysis #Methods
Value Changes in Pandemic Times
This webinar by the European Values Study (EVS) brings together scholars researching social values and examines how COVID-19 has affected the social fabric, offering insights into societal change during the pandemic.
- #Survey #Methods
Visualizing Data from the European Social Survey with R
This tutorial by the European Social Survey (ESS) guides users in creating effective and visually appealing visualizations of ESS data using base R, providing practical techniques for clear and informative data presentation.
- #RCode #DataAnalysis
Working with Data on Political BEHAVIOR: The CSES
This training by the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) teaches users to navigate the dataset, understand its cross-national structure, and apply appropriate methods for analysis. It emphasizes using documentation, accounting for hierarchical data, and applying techniques like multilevel models in comparative research.
- #Elections #ComparativeStudy #Methods #DataAnalysis
The European infrastructure for unlocking the true potential of data-driven democracy research