Social Science Space

Editor’s Note: If you’re curious about the ways in which data visualization and graph use can generate impact with regard […]

Vincent Adejumo says that his scholarship in the discipline of black politics can explain why there aren’t any national African American leaders at this moment, filling roles like Martin Luther King Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer and others once did.

New revelations about the influential ‘Being Sane in Insane Places’ experiment by David Rosenhan provide a valuable lesson for other social scientists. You never know what you will find once you begin fact-checking sources against available documentation.

The language of data visualisation has become commonplace, and data visualisations are widely used to communicate about the pandemic to the public. However, as Helen Kennedy observes, their power to influence the public is still little understood.

“In a world facing many complex, formidable problems,” Kenneth Prewitt asks, “how can the social sciences become a decisive force […]

Instead of viewing rumors and myths as misperceptions that can be suppressed with accurate information, we should treat them as opportunities to understand — and respond to — the legitimate anxieties of the people who adopt and share them. In other words, we should look at them as valuable feedback that can help improve our own reporting and messaging.

It’s also common to encounter people who are misinformed but don’t know it yet. It’s one thing to double-check your own information, but what’s the best way to talk to someone else about what they think is true – but which is not true?

t’s Academic Book Week 2020! The theme this year is the environment, and makers, providers and readers of academic books will be celebrating them as vehicles for ground-breaking ideas. To kick off the week, David Beer, author of ‘The Data Gaze,’ discusses the notion of ‘digital atrophy’ and consumer capitalism within the technological and social environment we inhabit.

The move towards including the first person perspective is becoming more acceptable in academia, notes the University of Queensland’s Peter Ellerton, who adds, there are times when invoking the first person is more meaningful and even rigorous than not.

Stoyan V. Sgourev, possibly the only management professor teaching (and indulging in) art history, argues that many of the key principles that guided the evolution of painting during the Italian Renaissance can be usefully applied to the domain of academic writing. Leonardo quite likely never intended to articulate advice on writing as an intellectual activity, but Stoyan borrows generously from his style and writings in formulating a number of basic principles that can help connect with the reader in a similar way to his paintings.

Jargon, a specialized language or set of expressions used by a specific group, is by its nature exclusionary, so it’s likely no surprise that scientific, technical or legal jargon may leave outsiders in the cold. A series of studies from researchers at Ohio State University suggests that jargon may turn off people well beyond an offending passage, and that one popular way to soften any harm – using jargon but immediately defining it – may not work.

Statistics are not the final objective answer to things. They can be interpreted in lots of different ways, even when none of those ways is wrong per se. That opens up a space for public debate, which is good news, but it also opens up a space where statistics can either be lauded as the truth (when they are not), or dismissed out of hand as ‘biased’.