Computational social science

Computational social science is a powerful research tool. But it needs its different disciplines to find a common language.

Smartphones, sensors and consumer habits reveal much about society. Too few people have a say in how these data are created and used.

Addressing the problem of sudden food scarcity in US cities, and the up-and-coming field of computational social science.

The combination of computational and social sciences requires the integration of explanatory and predictive approaches into ‘integrative modelling’, according to Hofman and colleagues.

Approaches for the management, use and analysis of large-scale behavioural datasets that were not originally intended or created for research are described.

This Perspective discusses the challenges for social science practices imposed by the ubiquity of algorithms and large-scale measurement and what should—and should not—be measured in societies pervaded by algorithms.

The use of new datastreams and local knowledge to shed light on social aspects of disease transmission will allow more accurate modelling and prediction of epidemics.

The ability of people to understand the thoughts and actions of others—known as social sensing—can be combined with computational social science to advance research into human sociality.

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An analysis of 16 types of facial expression in thousands of contexts in millions of videos revealed fine-grained patterns in human facial expression that are preserved across the modern world.

An epidemiological model that integrates fine-grained mobility networks illuminates mobility-related mechanisms that contribute to higher infection rates among disadvantaged socioeconomic and racial groups, and finds that restricting maximum occupancy at locations is especially effective for curbing infections.

An analysis of the search behaviour of recruiters on a Swiss online recruitment platform shows that jobseekers from minority ethnic groups are less likely to be contacted by recruiters, and also provides evidence of gender-based discrimination.

Insights into the interactions between pro- and anti-vaccination clusters on Facebook can enable policies and approaches that attempt to interrupt the shift to anti-vaccination views and persuade undecided individuals to adopt a pro-vaccination stance.

A model shows that human mobility is organized within hierarchical containers that coincide with familiar scales and that a power-law distribution emerges when movements between different containers are combined.

A new breed of researcher is turning to computation to understand society — and then change it.

Journals and researchers are under fire for controversial studies using this technology. And a Nature survey reveals that many researchers in this field think there is a problem.

Automated production of social-media posts can confound research studies.

An analysis of worldwide data finds that human mobility has a hierarchical structure. A proposed model that accounts for such hierarchies reproduces differences in mobility behaviour across genders and levels of urbanization.

Understanding the dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 infections could help to limit viral spread. Analysing mobile-phone data to track human contacts at different city venues offers a way to model infection risks and explain infection disparities.