New UCLA Certificate Program Meets Opportunity and Challenge of Big Data UCLA Luskin and University Extension are collaborating on a graduate-level program offering in-demand skills to a wide range of students

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By Stan Paul

Big data is here and UCLA Luskin is ready.

With the expansion of digital technologies for big data collection and analysis over the past two decades, new opportunities have been created for professionals in the larger policy arena. With this in mind, UCLA Luskin and UCLA University Extension have developed a collaborative certificate program that has been approved by UCLA’s Academic Senate.

The new program, Data Analytics for Public Affairs, won unanimous approval during the November joint meeting of the university’s Academic Senate Graduate and Undergraduate councils, UCLA Luskin Interim Dean Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris announced.

“It’s really exciting. We realized there is a lot of demand from mid-career professionals to develop analytic skills,” said Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld, associate professor of public policy and political science, who has accepted the interim dean’s request to serve as the director for the certificate. “We have put together an excellent program that gives them the opportunity to do that.”

At the same time, program planners recognized that these opportunities come with a number of risks and ethical dimensions that all professionals should be aware of, specifically privacy, the reliability of big data and unequal access to the internet.

New methodologies have emerged for data collection, analysis and visualization, and the Luskin School already offers a Data Analytics Certificate for its policy, planning and social welfare graduate students. But these new skills were not part of the education of professionals who completed their degrees even a few years ago.

Steinert-Threlkeld, who initiated the data analytics certificate program at the Luskin School and has served as the faculty lead, said that a bit of data analysis went into the decision to pursue this new venture. A survey launched to gauge interest in such a program directed questions at those who might be interested in adding data analytics to their skillsets as well as at supervisors who would find a benefit in having employees with these skills.

“We had over 300 responses, so that gave us confidence that there is strong demand for this certificate,” said Steinert-Threlkeld, who was part of a faculty committee assessing the initiative, led by Loukaitou-Sideris.

The program as envisioned in the committee proposal is designed to “attract and produce diverse cohorts of students interested in data analytics that can help enhance their understanding of big data and how they can be collected and analyzed, the ethical/social justice dimensions of big data, and how big data may apply to their professional practice.”

Housed at a school known for its emphasis on diversity and social justice, the program intends to “do better than other institutions in attracting a very diverse student body” and to “develop a broader perspective on data analytics courses designed to benefit a wide range of students,” the proposal says.

The program’s focus on public affairs also is designed to help it stand out from other UCLA Extension offerings. The graduate-level certificate, like other UCLA Extension programs, is open enrollment but targeted at those with prior academic experience, preferably a bachelor’s degree.

Four core courses will be required, including an overview of a variety of advanced technologies and their relevance to 21st-century governance and community development. Another course will examine ethical issues raised by the use of big data and data analytics for governance and community development projects. Topics to be explored include the tension between using data for the public good and protecting individual privacy.

A required data visualization course will allow students to explore approaches to communicating the value and impact of data to stakeholders at different organizational levels. The fourth course requirement is a data science course with two options: an introduction to programming and data science or a geographic information system (GIS) and spatial data analysis class.

Two optional electives included in the program are an introductory statistics class and an urban data science offering.

A launch date for the program has not yet been established but, said Steinert-Threlkeld, “Everyone in the school recognizes the demand for it and the benefit it will give to the enrollees, as well as to the School. We certainly think this will be received well and hope there’s very strong demand.”

Learning the Language of Technology Students like Rocio Perez MPP '23 can now earn a certificate to show they understand the power of programming in policy analysis

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By Stan Paul

The second cohort of alumni to earn a new certificate from UCLA Luskin entered the workforce in June with proof of their technical capabilities.

Although quantitative and qualitative research have long been part of a graduate education at the Luskin School, the Data Analytics Certificate recognizes students who focus on techniques and resources related to quantitative data analytics with the aid of powerful programming languages such as Python and R.

“Data can change hearts and minds,” said Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld, the professor of public policy and political science who started the program and serves as faculty lead. His own research and teaching focus on subnational conflict, statistics and advanced data analysis, including “big data.”

The certificate program has two benefits, Steinert-Threlkeld said, “and I think they’re equally important.” One signals to employers that a graduate has the ability to acquire, process, analyze and convey different data sets in general. The second benefit comes primarily from the program’s competency product requirement, which can be completed through class projects, a capstone project with a quantitative aspect, or doing work or an internship that involves using these programming tools.

Before coming to UCLA Luskin, Rocio Perez MPP ’23 had reached a point in her career where she couldn’t assist her supervisor with technical matters in the way she wanted.

“It felt like a missed opportunity. Had I had those skills, I would have been able to jump in and help my boss with analyzing data,” she said. “I didn’t want to feel that way anymore.”

Perez had noticed the power of mixed-methods research, and that led her to pursue graduate study and a career at the intersection of immigration and health.

“I wanted to get these quantitative skillsets because I knew how useful they would be,” she said.

As a graduate student, Perez also was a policy fellow for the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute (LPPI). She found herself creating data visualizations for LPPI even as she was learning about them in a statistics class.

Not coming from a STEM background, Perez was intimidated at first, but she persevered. “It really helped to put in practice what I was learning in class.”

Not only do students like Perez complete a minimum of three data-focused courses, they have to provide a work product that demonstrates their ability at a higher level. To receive competency product credit, the work must involve the use of
code and demonstrate advanced skills such as — but not limited to — geospatial analysis, machine learning, natural language processing, network analysis, regression analysis, structural equation modeling or visualization. 

The Data Analytics certificate’s areas of emphasis are:

  • Spatial Analysis, which includes courses on geographic information systems (GIS) and mapping;
  • Data Science, using programs such as R;
  • Advanced Methods, statistics courses with a strong programming component;
  • Program Evaluation, tools and survey methods courses with
    a technological focus;
  • Technology Policy and Ethics, courses that focus on data, technology and its use in policymaking and governing.

Most Master of Public Policy students come in with little or no programming experience, and a sizable number of them want to acquire it in graduate school, Steinert-Threlkeld said. “I think the certificate is becoming more attractive at the application stage, but it’s rare that a student comes in being good at R or Python.”

Steinert-Threlkeld also spoke about how these additional skills fit into the policy arena and how they will be relevant for the School’s alumni when launching into careers.

“The demand for these skills is placed on the people who are doing other jobs in the organization; it’s rare for a policy organization to have a full-time data analytics person, whether we’re talking about Capitol Hill or Sacramento,” he explained. “So, in the policy world, the data analysis is an additional skill set as opposed to the primary one.”

Following graduation, Perez landed a position as a health policy analyst with the nonpartisan UnidosUS, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that serves as the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization.

“It was very intentional, pursuing this,” Perez said. “Employers really look for concrete projects and examples that you’ve taken part in,” and the certificate provides that proof. “It’s like a cherry on the top.”

Steinert-Threlkeld on Twitter, Algorithms and Transparency

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An Atlantic article on Twitter’s decision to publicly share part of the source code that determines which posts are prioritized in a feed cited Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld, assistant professor of public policy and an authority on social media data. The glimpse at the algorithm revealed technical approaches that are “pretty standard these days,” Steinert-Threlkeld said. Twitter CEO Elon Musk has invited developers and the general public to suggest changes, and Steinert-Threlkeld noted that the company may be the biggest beneficiary of the decision to pull back the curtain on part of the code. “If bugs are discovered or improvements to the algorithms are suggested and accepted, Twitter will have found a way to replace the thousands of staff who left or were fired,” he said.

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Steinert-Threlkeld on Chinese Censorship of COVID Frustrations

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Assistant Professor of Public Policy Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld spoke to Al Jazeera about the Chinese government’s censorship of Shanghai residents’ expressions of frustration over an extended COVID-19 lockdown. “Shanghainese must realize that other countries have adopted looser approaches to COVID, especially in 2022, and probably feel there are less severe policy options available,” Steinert-Threlkeld said. Millions of people were confined to their homes in April as part of China’s “zero COVID” strategy in response to the Omicron outbreak, an approach reminiscent of the Wuhan lockdown in 2020. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has clamped down on social media posts that challenged the harsh lockdown. “The primary goal of CCP censorship is to prevent large-scale collective action,” Steinert-Threlkeld explained. “The censoring is counterproductive if one thinks the goal is to prevent disgruntlement about the lockdown from spreading, but it is productive if it prevents upset individuals from coordinating action outside of their homes.”

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Steinert-Threlkeld on Russia’s Disinformation Campaign

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In an interview with Business Insider, Assistant Professor of Public Policy Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld discussed the state of misinformation in Russia. He explained that the Russian disinformation campaign works by pushing out a large amount of misinformation, some of which contains small amounts of truth. “When you control the information that people see, you control their willingness to act in certain political directions,” Steinert-Threlkeld said. “So if people learned that a train station was bombed by Ukraine by neo-Nazis as opposed to Russian military forces, then the soldier deaths that Russians will eventually learn about is justified, right? Because you’re not the aggressor, you’re the defender.” Western leaders have urged Russian citizens to access independent and verified news about the war. But Steinert-Threlkeld estimated that only about 10% of Russia’s population currently has access to virtual private networks, or VPNs, and those who do have access aren’t necessarily protected from having their location revealed.

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Circumvention of Censorship in China Has Increased During COVID-19 Pandemic People who broke through firewalls to seek health information also gained access to long-banned political content, study finds

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By Mary Braswell

A study co-authored by Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs shows that more people in China circumvented censorship restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, opening a gateway to a trove of sensitive and long-hidden information.

Published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research identifies a spike in China-based activity on Twitter and Wikipedia, two platforms long banned by the government in Beijing.

The authors analyzed changes in the number of followers of popular accounts and traffic to certain Wikipedia pages to determine that, in addition to seeking news and information about the pandemic, users found sensitive information about China’s politics, history and human rights record.

During a crisis, the search for information increases under any form of governance, but leaders who use censorship as a tool to suppress dissent face heightened risks, said Steinert-Threlkeld, an assistant professor of public policy.

In China, the search for COVID-19-related information motivated individuals to find ways to skirt government-imposed regulations and technologies that block internet use. As a result, they gained access to censored material that government leaders perceive as damaging, he said.

“If I were one of those leaders I would find this alarming because it’s something that I can’t control.”

Researchers used Twitter to examine a sample of Chinese-language accounts whose self-reported locations are in mainland China, as well as an app-tracking service. They identified several trends, including:

  • an uptick in the number of people accessing technologies that would enable them to jump the Great Firewall, China’s network of restrictions on internet access;
  • Facebook becoming the 250th most downloaded app in China, up from the 600th, and Twitter becoming the 200th most downloaded app, up from the 575th, according to estimates;
  • a 10% long-term increase in the number of accounts from China using Twitter;
  • a greater than expected growth in followers — compared to users in Hong Kong, which was not under lockdown at the time — for accounts that tweet in Chinese, including international news agencies (31%), citizen journalists (42%), activists (28%) and pornography feeds that are generally banned in China (8%); and
  • increased viewership of Chinese-language Wikipedia pages on sensitive topics such as artist-activist Ai Weiwei and the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

The authors also uncovered nuances in Twitter usage. Their analysis of the content of the tweets alone suggested no effect — positive or negative — of the COVID-19 crisis. Digging deeper, however, they found that users who post only innocuous, nonpolitical tweets might still follow foreign news media, pro-democracy activists from Hong Kong or Taiwan, Chinese citizen-journalists or other banned Twitter accounts.

“As far as we can tell, the Chinese government has been relying on what people say to monitor the population,” Steinert-Threlkeld said. “But we show in this paper that people also reveal their sentiments by who they follow.”

The paper’s other authors are Keng-Chi Chang and Margaret E. Roberts of UC San Diego and William R. Hobbs of Cornell University.

The researchers note in the paper that Beijing’s crackdown on citizens who comment on banned platforms has become increasingly repressive over the last several years.

“While the results here do not link the COVID-19 crisis gateway effect to the political fortunes of the Chinese government, they do suggest that a country with a highly censored environment sees distinctive and wide-ranging increases in information access during crisis,” they conclude.

Taking Data-Driven Policy Into the Future

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The trajectory of modern society increasingly deploys data to address equity issues around such diverse topics as housing evictions, air quality, or criminal justice reform.

Learn how.

Presenting UCLA’s first conference on Data-Informed Governance (DIG)

July 7, 2021

Online, starting at 8 a.m. PDT

REGISTER NOW

Watch three panel discussions featuring experts and peers from the public, private, and civic sectors.

Exchange innovative, actionable approaches to real-world policy issues.

Find out why it is increasingly critical for state and local governments to become technology proficient, using data to inform critical policy decisions.

Join with participants from a wide spectrum of organizations and geographies — from local nonprofits to national research institutes, small cities to regional governing bodies.

LEARN MORE

The DIG conference is a convening of people from diverse backgrounds that aims to demonstrate the potential for structured peer-to-peer learning on this subject. This cross-section of attendee profiles encourages the advancement of data-centric solutions for public policy that are accessible, scalable, and pragmatic.

DIG is made possible thanks to the support of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, the Luskin Center for Innovation at UCLA, the College of Social Sciences, the LA Social Science Initiative, the Anderson School of Management, the Ziman Center for Real Estate, and Impact@Anderson.

Steinert-Threlkeld on Rise of Alt-Right Forums

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Assistant Professor of Public Policy Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld spoke to Dot.LA about the role of social media platforms leading up to the invasion of the U.S. Capitol. While some mainstream social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram have made efforts to crack down on President Donald Trump’s false rhetoric, alt-right forums including Parler, Gab and theDonald.win have promoted calls for violence and rebellion. There’s been a shift away from mainstream sites like Twitter and Facebook to alt-right platforms as stronger moderation policies have been implemented, Steinert-Threlkeld explained. Over the last two years especially, supporters have turned to far-right online platforms for “tactical coordination,” he added. Steinert-Threlkeld identified similarities between the use of real-time online platforms in the organization of protests in Iran in 2009 and among Trump supporters today. He also said many supporters are probably having private conversations in closed and private groups on Facebook or through encrypted messaging platforms.

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Steinert-Threlkeld on Social Media Response to Kamala Harris

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Assistant Professor of Public Policy Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld spoke to Zenger News about the growing role of social media in recent election cycles. Social media engagement with stories about Joe Biden hit a high the week the Democratic presidential candidate named Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate. Social media has become a more significant part of the political process than in previous election cycles, Steinert-Thelkeld explained. This increase in social media engagement makes it difficult to draw comparisons with Donald Trump’s selection of Mike Pence as his running mate in 2016. However, Steinert-Thelkeld highlighted the differences between the vice presidential candidates. “I think it’s more about the person that people are responding to as opposed to the four-year difference,” he said. “Pence is not that exciting. Pence is like the Biden now, and Kamala is like the Trump then.”

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8th Annual Trivia Night Is a Battle of Bits

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Super Quiz Bowl — a longstanding UCLA Luskin tradition — went virtual this year due to COVID-19, but enthusiasm remained high with nearly 250 competitors participating via home computers and cellphones in a trivia night held May 28. “From this mighty group, we had 19 faculty and staff, 110 students and 119 alumni,” said organizer Tammy Borrero, the School’s director of events. “This was our highest participation since its inception eight years ago.” Individuals and groups were able to compete simultaneously in the six-round tournament while enjoying a quick home-cooked meal or sofa snack and favorite beverage, thanks to Borrero and a team of staff and faculty who served as game hosts, co-organizers and participants. All three of the School’s graduate programs and the undergraduate Public Affairs major formed creatively named teams including PhDs in PJs, Mighty MURPs and Categorial Exemption. This year’s group prize went to a combined team of urban planners and social welfare graduate students, which evened out department standings across all years of competition, according to organizers. Plans are already underway to bring the event back under the tent next year.

Team Competition Winners

First Place: Plucky Opposers (Social Welfare and Urban Planning) Hanako Justice (SW), Julia Kulewicz (SW), Sam Speroni (UP), Arthur Sun (SW), Meagan Wang (UP)
Second Place: All Coast All Stars (Public Policy) Robert Gamboa, Brian Harris, Eric Schroer, Samuel Stalls, Sean Tan
Third Place: La Croix Taste Test (Public Policy) Adam Barsch, Jess Bendit, Rosie Brown, Dickran Jebejian, and Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld

Individual Competition Winners

First Place: Melody Wang, Urban Planning and Social Welfare
Second Place: Michael Busse, Urban Planning
Third Place: Nathaniel Singer, Undergraduate Program