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The Community Data Science Collective (CDSC) is an interdisciplinary research group made up of faculty and students at the University of Washington Department of Communication (Seattle), the Northwestern University Department of Communication Studies, the School of Information at UT Austin, the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University, the University of Idaho Department of Psychology and Communication, and the University of Washington Department of Computing and Software Systems (Bothell).
We are social scientists and computer scientists applying a range of quantitative and qualitative methods to the study of online communities. We seek to understand both how and why some attempts at collaborative production — like Wikipedia and Linux — build large volunteer communities and high-quality work products.
Our research is particularly focused on how the design of communication and information technologies shapes fundamental social outcomes with broad theoretical and practical implications — like an individual’s decision to join a community, contribute to a public good, or a group’s ability to make decisions democratically.
Our research is deeply interdisciplinary. It most frequently consists of “big data” quantitative analyses, but also includes qualitative analyses such as interview studies. Our work lies at the intersection of communication, sociology, human-computer interaction, information science, and computer science.
To learn more about the CDSC, please check out our about page (especially the links there). Prospective students should also review these materials.
Outreach
Our group is committed to public scholarship. We express this commitment through a series of events and publications directed at practitioner audiences and focused on translating our publications for nonacademic audiences.
- Community Data Science Blog — A blog that we update regularly with summaries of our papers, reflections on research and online communities, and whatever else is on our minds!
- Science of Community Dialogues — A series of events that bring together community leaders, organizers, and researchers to share evidence-based strategies for thriving communities.
- Research briefs — Short, accessible summaries of our research written for community leaders, practitioners, and policy makers.
Courses
In addition to research, we teach classes and run workshops. Some of that work is coordinated on this wiki. A more detailed list of workshops and teaching material on this wiki is on our Workshops and Classes page. On this page, we only list ongoing classes and workshops with their own wiki pages or syllabi.
University of Washington | Seattle Courses
- [Fall 2026] COM 500: Communication Theory Development — This is a required introductory course for new students in the MA/PhD program at UW. It provides a sort of introduction to field/discipline of communication, communication theory, and the department in particular. In 2026 it is taught to incoming Communication MA/PhD students alongside students from Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE).
- [Fall 2026] COM 481: Online Communities — An undergraduate course on online communities taught by Dionna Taylor.
- [Fall 2026] COMMLD 570: Building Successful Online Communities — A course on online communities taught by Benjamin Mako Hill in the Communication Leadership Masters Program (COMMLD).
University of Washington | Bothell Courses
- [Fall 2026] CSS360: Software Engineering — Surveys the software engineering processes, tools, and techniques used in software development and quality assurance. Taught by Kaylea Champion.
Research Resources
If you are a member of the collective, perhaps you're looking for CommunityData:Resources, which includes details on email, TeX templates, documentation on our computing resources, etc.
About This Wiki
This is open to the public and hackable by all but mostly contains information that will be useful to collective members, their collaborators, people enrolled in their projects, or people interested in building off of their work. If you're interested in making a change or creating content here, generally feel empowered to Be Bold. If things don't fit, somebody who watches this wiki will be in touch.
This is mostly a normal MediaWiki although there are a few things to know:
- There's a CAPTCHA enabled. If you create an account and then contact any collective member with your username (on or off wiki), they can turn the CAPTCHA off for you.
- Extension:Math is installed so you can write math here. Basically you just add math by putting TeX inside <math> tags like this: <math>\frac{\sigma}{\sqrt{n}}</math> and it will write .
Follow Us!
Follow us on Bluesky as @communitydata.science, @communitydata@social.coop in the Fediverse/Mastodon, or @comdatasci on X/Twitter.
Best of all, subscribe to the Community Data Science Collective blog to get email updates!
Research News
Recent posts from the blog:
- Dionna Taylor at APHA 2026: Disease Burden and Online Health Discussion
- Dionna Taylor will be in San Antonio this coming week to present at the APHA 2026 Annual Meeting and Expo between November 1–4. We believe this is the first time anybody from the collective has been to APHA, so please stop by and say hi or reach out to Dionna! Sunday, November 1, 1:00–2:00 pm …
Continue reading "Dionna Taylor at APHA 2026: Disease Burden and Online Health Discussion"
- — Community Data Science Collective https://communitydata.cc/ 2026-10-30
- Report back from CSCW 2026
- @groceryheist, @yiweiwu, @kaylea, and @mako attended CSCW 2026 from Oct 10 through Oct 14. A previous blog post covers our presentations. Here we’re sharing some takeaways and highlights from the conference. I (Nate) wrote this post, so it naturally reflects my views most, but I’m also drawing on my conversations with the other CDSC attendees. …
- — Nate TeBlunthuis 2026-10-30
- The Politics of the “Non-Political”
- Communication around politics matters a lot for the healthy development of a society. We usually associate political information with campaigns, public appearances by politicians, and discussions about voting. Yet politically relevant information nowadays frequently enters everyday life: when people decide which city or neighborhood to live in, when groups gather around sharply different cultures, and …
- — Yibin Fan 2026-10-12
- CDSC at CSCW 2026: Rules, Knowledge Gaps, and AI in Open Source
- The Community Data Science Collective is heading to CSCW 2026 in Salt Lake City, Utah, October 10–14. Mako Hill, Kaylea Champion, Nate TeBlunthuis, and Yiwei Wu will be there. We hope you’ll join us at any of the sessions below. Tuesday, October 13, 2:30 pm (Skylight Ballroom, Crowdsourcing & Peer Production) Nate TeBlunthuis will present …
Continue reading "CDSC at CSCW 2026: Rules, Knowledge Gaps, and AI in Open Source"
- — Benjamin Mako Hill http://mako.cc 2026-10-05
- — Aaron Shaw http://aaronshaw.org 2026-10-09
