Many people are possessed with social networking. Digital facilities bring convenience to our daily life while cause risks too.

In an era increasingly characterized by the importance of data, computers are playing a greater role in the study of social behaviors. The emergence of the discipline of computational social sciences was heralded in a 2009 article by Harvard Professor David Lazer and 14 other scientists in the journal Science.

 

Social behavior become quantified 

In an information age, digital records of individual behavior, such as emails, transit cards, and purchases, have taken the place of the paper trail. Conducting research in the age of big data requires computational social scientists to not only record but also compute findings to gain a more profound and far-sighted interpretation of society, economics and politics from the seemingly casual individual behaviors and social functions.

 

“In today’s network society, human behavior has changed tremendously compared with relatively independent individual decision-making,” said Wang Guocheng, a research fellow from the Institute of Quantitative and Technical Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). Through comprehensive analysis of the data indicative of historical behaviors, originally inscrutable social behaviors become something that can be quantified, interpreted and illustrated, and even predicted and preprocessed, Wang added.

 

Computational social science has elevated quantitative social research to a new height. Meng Xiaofeng, a professor from the School of Information at Renmin University of China, noted that unlike traditional social sciences, which usually collect data through surveys, computational social science calls upon data mining and machine learning as its core techniques to discover knowledge and manage data.

 

Through data mining, social scientists can process nonlinear, noisy and vague data, analyzing the quality of data and complicated social systems based on social processes and relationships. Computational social science enhances researchers’ ability to collect data as well as to analyze individual and group behavior patterns, said Yu Li, an associate professor from Renmin University’s School of Information.

 

Popularity of computational social science 

By carrying out profound and detailed interdisciplinary research on human behavior and social functioning, computational social science has changed people’s view of traditional humanities and social sciences while breaking down boundaries between disciplines.

 

In the United States, researchers have already began to use methods in computational social science to study complicated phenomena in social systems and propose new theories, including researchers from interdisciplinary institutes, such as the Santa Fe Institute, the Google Institute, HP’s Social Computing Lab and universities, like Harvard, Stanford and Cornell. It is widely used in intelligence and security informatics, public health events, virtual military exercises and online communities.

 

The popularity of computational social science is also growing in China.Chinese scholars are working on cutting-edge topics in the field. For instance, Tang Shiping, a professor from Fudan University’s School of International Relations and Public Affairs, applied the theory of biological evolution and data analysis methods to research institutional change and international politics. Wu Tong, from the Institute of Science, Technology and Society at Tsinghua University, broadened the purview of the philosophy of science by introducing hard sciences to the humanities and social sciences. Wang Feiyue, a research fellow from the Institute of Automation at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) was among the earliest to discuss theory and methods in computational social science. Du Haifeng, executive director of Xi’an Jiaotong University’s Institute of Public Administration and Complex Sciences, is now in charge of the “Analysis of Individual and Group Behaviors and its Application in Public Security: A Study Based on Social Computing and Massive Network Data,” a key project sponsored by National Social Science Fund.

 

Debates and challenges 

Since the 21st century, institutes or platforms for computational social science have been set up at institutions such as CASS, CAS, Renmin University, Nanjing University and Jiangsu University.

 

Yu Li observed that computational social science is a typical example of interaction between social sciences and natural sciences. The great challenges it faces include the degree of agreement among researchers from different disciplines and the great difference between the two in terms of research approach and evaluation criteria. Given people’s psychology and subjective initiatives, social science research cannot be reduced to simple quantitative modeling.

 

Wang Guocheng is more optimistic, though. “Automation in computational thinking tends to focus on complexity, which is difficult to handle with conventional methods, making it apparently different from common engineering automation and more conducive to creating new knowledge with social science significance,” Wang said.

 

Considering the complex problems arising from individual differences, mutual exchanges and networking, the application of computing in social sciences is still at the initial stage. Lagging concepts, unclear directions for theoretical integration, lack of talent with integrated multidisciplinary training, constraints of the original disciplinary framework and protection of privacy could all become barriers to the development of social sciences, Wang said.

 

In December 2013, the Journal of Computer Research and Development had a special feature on social computing. However, few of the 93 articles were contributed by social scientists. Meng Xiaofeng maintained that big data requires interdisciplinary collaboration and training, while our greatest challenge is the lack of unified theoretical guidance among different disciplines.

 

Wang Guocheng noted that if computational thinking can be endowed with the spirit of humanity, we will certainly provide a more valid interpretation of increasingly complicated socioeconomic activities.

 

 

The Chinese version appeared in Chinese Social Sciences Today, No. 584, Apr.16, 2014     

The Chinese link is: http://www.cssn.cn/kxk/dt/201404/t20140416_1069223.shtml

 

Translated by Feng Daimei