Computational social science is the academic sub-discipline concerned with computational approaches to the
social science
Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of s ...
s. This means that computers are used to model, simulate, and analyze social phenomena. Fields include
computational economics
Computational Economics is an interdisciplinary research discipline that involves computer science, economics, and management science.''Computational Economics''."About This Journal"an"Aims and Scope" This subject encompasses computational model ...
,
computational sociology
Computational sociology is a branch of sociology that uses computationally intensive methods to analyze and model social phenomena. Using computer simulations, artificial intelligence, complex statistical methods, and analytic approaches like soc ...
,
cliodynamics
Cliodynamics () is a transdisciplinary area of research that integrates cultural evolution, economic history/cliometrics, macrosociology, the mathematical modeling of historical processes during the '' longue durée'', and the construction and anal ...
,
culturomics
Culturomics is a form of computational lexicology that studies human behavior and cultural trends through the quantitative analysis of digitized texts. Researchers data mine large digital archives to investigate cultural phenomena reflected in ...
, and the automated analysis of contents, in social and traditional media. It focuses on investigating social and behavioral relationships and interactions through
social simulation
Social simulation is a research field that applies computational methods to study issues in the social sciences. The issues explored include problems in computational law, psychology, organizational behavior, sociology, political science, e ...
, modeling, network analysis, and media analysis.
Definitions
There are two terminologies that relate to each other: Social Science Computing (SSC) and Computational Social Science (CSS). In literature, CSS is referred to the field of social science that uses the computational approaches in studying the social phenomena.
On the other hand, SSC is the field in which computational methodologies are created to assist in explanations of social phenomena.
Computational social science revolutionizes both fundamental legs of the
scientific method
The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientifi ...
:
empirical research
Empirical research is research using empirical evidence. It is also a way of gaining knowledge by means of direct and indirect observation or experience. Empiricism values some research more than other kinds. Empirical evidence (the record of ...
, especially through
big data
Though used sometimes loosely partly because of a lack of formal definition, the interpretation that seems to best describe Big data is the one associated with large body of information that we could not comprehend when used only in smaller am ...
, by analyzing the
digital footprint left behind through social online activities; and
scientific theory
A scientific theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world and universe that has been repeatedly tested and corroborated in accordance with the scientific method, using accepted protocols of observation, measurement, and evaluati ...
, especially through
computer simulation
Computer simulation is the process of mathematical modelling, performed on a computer, which is designed to predict the behaviour of, or the outcome of, a real-world or physical system. The reliability of some mathematical models can be deter ...
model building through
social simulation
Social simulation is a research field that applies computational methods to study issues in the social sciences. The issues explored include problems in computational law, psychology, organizational behavior, sociology, political science, e ...
.
It is a multi-disciplinary and integrated approach to social survey focusing on information processing by means of advanced information technology. The computational tasks include the analysis of social networks, social geographic systems, social media content and traditional media content.
Computational social science work increasingly relies on the greater availability of large databases, currently constructed and maintained by a number of interdisciplinary projects, including:
* The
Seshat: Global History Databank, which systematically collects state-of-the-art accounts of the political and social organization of human groups and how societies have evolved through time into an authoritativ
''databank'' Seshat is affiliated also with the
Evolution Institute, a non-profit think-tank that "uses evolutionary science to solve real-world problems."
''D-PLACE'' the Database of Places, Languages, Culture and Environment, which provides data on over 1,400 human social formations
''The Atlas of Cultural Evolution'', an archaeological database created by
Peter N. Peregrine
Peter N. Peregrine (born November 29, 1963) is an American anthropologist, registered professional archaeologist, and academic. He is well known for his promotion of the use of science in anthropology, and for his popular textbook ''Anthropology' ...
''CHIA: The Collaborative Information for Historical Analysis'' a multidisciplinary collaborative endeavor hosted by the
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the univers ...
with the goal of archiving historical information and linking data as well as academic/research institutions around the globe
''International Institute of Social History'' which collects data on the global social history of labour relations, workers, and labour
*
Human Relations Area Files
The Human Relations Area Files, Inc. (HRAF), located in New Haven, Connecticut, US, is an international nonprofit membership organization with over 500 member institutions in more than 20 countries. A financially autonomous research agency based a ...
eHRAF Archaeology
*
Human Relations Area Files
The Human Relations Area Files, Inc. (HRAF), located in New Haven, Connecticut, US, is an international nonprofit membership organization with over 500 member institutions in more than 20 countries. A financially autonomous research agency based a ...
eHRAF World Cultures
Clio-Infraa database of measures of economic performance and other aspects of societal well-being on a global sample of societies from 1800 CE to the present
* The
Google Ngram Viewer
The Google Ngram Viewer or Google Books Ngram Viewer is an online search engine that charts the frequencies of any set of search strings using a yearly count of n-grams found in printed sources published between 1500 and 2019 in Google's text cor ...
, an online search engine that charts frequencies of sets of comma-delimited search strings using a yearly count of n-grams as found in the largest online body of human knowledge, the
Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...
corpus.
The analysis of vast quantities of historical newspaper and book content have been pioneered in 2017, while other studies on similar data showed how periodic structures can be automatically discovered in historical newspapers. A similar analysis was performed on social media, again revealing strongly periodic structures.
[Seasonal Fluctuations in Collective Mood Revealed by Wikipedia Searches and Twitter Posts F Dzogang, T Lansdall-Welfare, N Cristianini - 2016 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, Workshop on ''Data Mining'' in Human Activity Analysis]
See also
*
Cliodynamics
Cliodynamics () is a transdisciplinary area of research that integrates cultural evolution, economic history/cliometrics, macrosociology, the mathematical modeling of historical processes during the '' longue durée'', and the construction and anal ...
*
Computational cognition
*
Computational politics
*
Computational sociology
Computational sociology is a branch of sociology that uses computationally intensive methods to analyze and model social phenomena. Using computer simulations, artificial intelligence, complex statistical methods, and analytic approaches like soc ...
*
Digital humanities
Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or Information technology, digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanitie ...
*
Digital sociology
The sociology of the Internet involves the application of sociological theory and method to the Internet as a source of information and communication. The overlapping field of digital sociology focuses on understanding the use of digital media a ...
*
Online content analysis
*
Predictive analytics
Predictive analytics encompasses a variety of statistical techniques from data mining, predictive modeling, and machine learning that analyze current and historical facts to make predictions about future or otherwise unknown events.
In busine ...
*
Seshat (project)
*
Social informatics
Social informatics is the study of information and communication tools in cultural or institutional contexts. Another definition is the interdisciplinary study of the design, uses and consequences of information technologies that takes into acco ...
*
Social web
The social web is a set of social relations that link people through the World Wide Web. The social web encompasses how websites and software are designed and developed in order to support and foster social interaction. These online social inte ...
**
Social network analysis
Social network analysis (SNA) is the process of investigating social structures through the use of networks and graph theory. It characterizes networked structures in terms of ''nodes'' (individual actors, people, or things within the network) ...
References
{{reflist
External links
ESSA European Social Simulation Association portal
PAAA Pan-Asian Association for Agent-based Approach in Social Systems Sciences
CSSSA Computational Social Science Society of the Americas
2022 International Conference on Computational Social Science "Life in the network: the coming age of computational social science" Retrieved June 10, 2015.
Seshat
Computational social science,
Social sciences
Computational science
Computational fields of study