Political Networks and Computational Social Science

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lazer ◽  
Stefan Wojcik
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Big Data ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Inflection Point ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Computational Social Science ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Computational Approaches ◽  
Political Networks ◽  
The Social

The last half century has witnessed the digitization of human life, with a sharp inflection point being the widespread adoption of the Internet. In the wake of this digitization the phrase “big data” has been coined. Because many big data are explicitly or implicitly relational, this digitization of humanity has been critical in the increase in the study of networks. Further, since this digitization process continues not only forward but backward (e.g., through the scanning of millions of books and news periodicals going back for centuries), it is likely that the social sciences will be recentered over the next generation around computational approaches to data emphasizing (1) the relational aspects of human behavior, (2) phenomena that exist on societal scales rather than just individual ones, and (3) the dynamics of human behavior. This chapter discusses, in particular, the potential transformation of political science in these directions.

What Theology Should and Should Not Learn from the Social Sciences About the Common Good

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary L. Hirschfeld
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Catholic Social Thought ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common

There are two ways to answer the question, What can Catholic social thought learn from the social sciences about the common good? A more modern form of Catholic social thought, which primarily thinks of the common good in terms of the equitable distribution of goods like health, education, and opportunity, could benefit from the extensive literature in public policy, economics, and political science, which study the role of institutions and policies in generating desirable social outcomes. A second approach, rooted in pre-Machiavellian Catholic thought, would expand on this modern notion to include concerns about the way the culture shapes our understanding of what genuine human flourishing entails. On that account, the social sciences offer a valuable description of human life; but because they underestimate how human behavior is shaped by institutions, policies, and the discourse of social science itself, their insights need to be treated with caution.

scholarly journals Big Data: Some Ethical Concerns for the Social Sciences

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 36
Author(s):  
Michael Weinhardt
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Big Data ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Online Behavior ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Behaviors ◽  
State Actors

While big data (BD) has been around for a while now, the social sciences have been comparatively cautious in its adoption for research purposes. This article briefly discusses the scope and variety of BD, and its research potential and ethical implications for the social sciences and sociology, which derive from these characteristics. For example, BD allows for the analysis of actual (online) behavior and the analysis of networks on a grand scale. The sheer volume and variety of data allow for the detection of rare patterns and behaviors that would otherwise go unnoticed. However, there are also a range of ethical issues of BD that need consideration. These entail, amongst others, the imperative for documentation and dissemination of methods, data, and results, the problems of anonymization and re-identification, and the questions surrounding the ability of stakeholders in big data research and institutionalized bodies to handle ethical issues. There are also grave risks involved in the (mis)use of BD, as it holds great value for companies, criminals, and state actors alike. The article concludes that BD holds great potential for the social sciences, but that there are still a range of practical and ethical issues that need addressing.

scholarly journals Tipping points among social learners: Tools from varied disciplines

2012 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 298-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Alexander Bentley ◽  
Michael J. O’Brien
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Animal Behavior ◽  
Collective Behavior ◽  
Tipping Points ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
The Social

Abstract There is a long and rich tradition in the social sciences of using models of collective behavior in animals as jumping-off points for the study of human behavior, including collective human behavior. Here, we come at the problem in a slightly different fashion. We ask whether models of collective human behavior have anything to offer those who study animal behavior. Our brief example of tipping points, a model first developed in the physical sciences and later used in the social sciences, suggests that the analysis of human collective behavior does indeed have considerable to offer [Current Zoology 58 (2): 298–306, 2012].

scholarly journals Representação e ciências sociais

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-126
Author(s):  
Drance Elias da Silva
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Knowledge Representation ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
General View ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Social ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Expression Form

This Article may be situated within the rapport field between Philosophy and Social Sciences, at the search regarding to the concept concerning the Representation. Regarding to Philosophy, under a general view, the concept, concerning Representation, has been, since a long time, understood as a trail which one would get througl reaching to the real and true ones. Representation, as the thought contents expression form had not been known departing from Philosophy as a barrier against the objectivity concerning the knowledge. Representation, in its source, has been constituting itself a cognictive, inmanent reflection, related to the conscience inner subjectivity. But departing from the episthemological point of view, it has been not so easy for the campus concerning the Culture Sciences as a totality. In the theory regarding to knowledge, the Social Sciences campus and, more specifically, in the human life Symbolic dimension constitutive aspects, it has been, often, accepted negatively as an entry door for the histotical social reality. Nowadays, one may conclude that the contents concerning the Culture are deeply rooted within the histotical reality, which may present new dimension the reading regarding to the Symbolical side concerning the human life, under the view regarding to the unseen aspect, such as the intellectualistic Western dominant Culture allows understanding the way which could be in.

scholarly journals Bought and Sold: Exploring the Effects of Big Data on User Agency and Commodification

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristia M. Pavlakos
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Big Data ◽  
Data Privacy ◽  
Large Data ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Privacy Regulation ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
User Interests ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

Big Data1is a phenomenon that has been increasingly studied in the academy in recent years, especially in technological and scientific contexts. However, it is still a relatively new field of academic study; because it has been previously considered in mainly technological contexts, more attention needs to be drawn to the contributions made in Big Data scholarship in the social sciences by scholars like Omar Tene and Jules Polonetsky, Bart Custers, Kate Crawford, Nick Couldry, and Jose van Dijk. The purpose of this Major Research Paper is to gain insight into the issues surrounding privacy and user rights, roles, and commodification in relation to Big Data in a social sciences context. The term “Big Data” describes the collection, aggregation, and analysis of large data sets. While corporations are usually responsible for the analysis and dissemination of the data, most of this data is user generated, and there must be considerations regarding the user’s rights and roles. In this paper, I raise three main issues that shape the discussion: how users can be more active agents in data ownership, how consent measures can be made to actively reflect user interests instead of focusing on benefitting corporations, and how user agency can be preserved. Through an analysis of social sciences scholarly literature on Big Data, privacy, and user commodification, I wish to determine how these concepts are being discussed, where there have been advancements in privacy regulation and the prevention of user commodification, and where there is a need to improve these measures. In doing this, I hope to discover a way to better facilitate the relationship between data collectors and analysts, and user-generators. 1 While there is no definitive resolution as to whether or not to capitalize the term “Big Data”, in capitalizing it I chose to conform with such authors as boyd and Crawford (2012), Couldry and Turow (2014), and Dalton and Thatcher (2015), who do so in the scholarly literature.

Reasons, Causes, and Intentional Explanation

1986 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick Stoutland
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Social ◽  
Intentional Explanation ◽  
Covering Law ◽  
Causal Laws ◽  
Physical Laws ◽  
And Behavior

AbstractThe reasons-causes debate concerns whether explanations of human behavior in terms of an agent's reasons presuppose causal laws. This paper considers three approaches to this debate: the covering law model which holds that there are causal laws covering both reasons and behavior, the intentionalist approach which denies any role to causal laws, and Donald Davidson’s point of view which denies that causal laws connect reasons and behavior, but holds that reasons and behavior must be covered by physical laws if reasons explanations are to be valid. I defend the intentionalist approach against the two causalist approaches and conclude with reflections on the significance of the debate for the social sciences.

scholarly journals Concept, Possibilities and Pilot-Testing of a New Smartphone Application for the Social and Life Sciences to Study Human Behavior Including Validation Data from Personality Psychology

J ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Montag ◽  
Harald Baumeister ◽  
Christopher Kannen ◽  
Rayna Sariyska ◽  
Eva-Maria Meßner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Internet Of Things ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Smartphone Application ◽  
Self Report ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Validation Data ◽  
Personality Psychology ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Internet Of Things

With the advent of the World Wide Web, the smartphone and the Internet of Things, not only society but also the sciences are rapidly changing. In particular, the social sciences can profit from these digital developments, because now scientists have the power to study real-life human behavior via smartphones and other devices connected to the Internet of Things on a large-scale level. Although this sounds easy, scientists often face the problem that no practicable solution exists to participate in such a new scientific movement, due to a lack of an interdisciplinary network. If so, the development time of a new product, such as a smartphone application to get insights into human behavior takes an enormous amount of time and resources. Given this problem, the present work presents an easy way to use a smartphone application, which can be applied by social scientists to study a large range of scientific questions. The application provides measurements of variables via tracking smartphone–use patterns, such as call behavior, application use (e.g., social media), GPS and many others. In addition, the presented Android-based smartphone application, called Insights, can also be used to administer self-report questionnaires for conducting experience sampling and to search for co-variations between smartphone usage/smartphone data and self-report data. Of importance, the present work gives a detailed overview on how to conduct a study using an application such as Insights, starting from designing the study, installing the application to analyzing the data. In the present work, server requirements and privacy issues are also discussed. Furthermore, first validation data from personality psychology are presented. Such validation data are important in establishing trust in the applied technology to track behavior. In sum, the aim of the present work is (i) to provide interested scientists a short overview on how to conduct a study with smartphone app tracking technology, (ii) to present the features of the designed smartphone application and (iii) to demonstrate its validity with a proof of concept study, hence correlating smartphone usage with personality measures.

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