Defining Computational Social Science

What exactly is “computational social science”?

Readings

Slides

Background

Advances in computing have facilitated two trends:

  1. Computers are getting smaller and cheaper.
  2. Computing is becoming more ubiquitous.

The effects of these trends are visible on the social sciences. For example, advances in processing power and computational algorithms have enabled new approaches to statistics which rely on Bayesian inference (Fienberg 2006, 24). From a more human-centered perspective, interactive computational technologies enable new forms of collaboration between scientists, though not necessarily an increase in productivity (Goldstein 2023).

At the same time, the ubiquity of computation continues to produce rich datasets with great potential for social science analysis (King 2011). Further, the new communication methods have become areas of study in and of themselves (boyd and Ellison 2007).

Proposing Computational Social Science

In response to these trends, some scientists view computational social science as an emerging field in its own right. D. Lazer et al. (2009) presents a vision for the field as one which should not be captured by large companies or researchers with privileged access to data, but rather one based on open science. In their view, the ubiquity of data collection combined with the computational resource to analyze offers opportunities to enrich social science research; however, this new paradigm brings new methodological challenges in addition to issues related to data access and privacy (D. Lazer et al. 2009, 722).

This paper coincided with the “Web 2.0” era of the internet, which relied upon services creating a virtuous cycle by providing data to then be consumed and reused (O’Reilly, Tim 2005). More than a decade later, a retrospective of the extent to which the vision laid out in D. Lazer et al. (2009) has been achieved remains mixed. In a follow up article, D. M. J. Lazer et al. (2020) found that many of the challenges for CSS remained: university incentives and departments poorly reflecting the multidisciplinary nature of the field, data access remains difficult, and the ethical best practices are still being developed. Scientists have used these paradigms to do some very interesting research, which we will discuss throughout this course, yet many of the challenges remain and the full vision remains unrealized in many ways.

References

boyd, danah m., and Nicole B. Ellison. 2007. “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (1): 210–30. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x.
Fienberg, Stephen E. 2006. “When Did Bayesian Inference Become "Bayesian"?” Bayesian Analysis 1 (1). https://doi.org/10.1214/06-BA101.
Goldstein, Ezra G. 2023. “Communication Costs in Science: Evidence from the National Science Foundation Network.” Industrial and Corporate Change, June. https://doi.org/10.1093/icc/dtad025.
“Introduction.” 2018. In Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age, 1–12. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
King, Gary. 2011. “Ensuring the Data-Rich Future of the Social Sciences.” Science 331 (6018): 719–21. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1197872.
King, Gary, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts. 2013. “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression.” American Political Science Review 107 (2). https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055413000014.
Lazer, David M. J., Alex Pentland, Duncan J. Watts, Sinan Aral, Susan Athey, Noshir Contractor, Deen Freelon, et al. 2020. “Computational Social Science: Obstacles and Opportunities.” Science 369 (6507): 1060–62. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaz8170.
Lazer, David, Alex Pentland, Lada Adamic, Sinan Aral, Albert-László Barabási, Devon Brewer, Nicholas Christakis, et al. 2009. “Computational Social Science.” Science 323 (5915): 721–23. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1167742.
O’Reilly, Tim. 2005. “What Is Web 2.0.” O’Reilly Media. https://web.archive.org/web/20130424204457/http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html.