Defining Computational Social Science

What exactly is “computational social science”?

How have the social sciences changed alongside the rise of computers?

Methods

  • Advances in computationally expensive statistical techniques such as Bayesian inference (Fienberg 2006, 24)
  • Changes in collaborative patterns between scientists, though not necessarily an increase in productivity (Goldstein 2023)

Data

  • Trace data allow us to observe existing social processes at scale (King 2011)
  • New communication methods create new areas of study (boyd and Ellison 2007)

So we have

  1. A lot more data on social processes; and
  2. The computational power to analyze it.

Computational Social Science

Lazer et al. (2009) …

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.
King, Gary. 2011. “Ensuring the Data-Rich Future of the Social Sciences.” Science 331 (6018): 719–21. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1197872.
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.