Social, Behavioral Scientists Eligible to Apply for NSF S-STEM Grants
Solicitations are now being sought for the National Science Foundation’s Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program, and in an unheralded […]
In this Social Science Bites podcast, MIT’s Sandy Pentland tells interviewer Dave Edmonds about the origins of social physics in the barren days before the advent of widespread good data and solid statistical methods and how it blossomed as both a field and for Pentland’s own research.
How will social science research and teaching evolve to meet the challenges and opportunities big data creates? How can we bring down barriers to make this new computational social science accessible for all social researchers? That was the subject of a panel discussion at last month’s ESRC Festival of Social Sciences 2016.
SAGE Publishing surveyed social scientists around the world to learn more about who engages in research using ‘big data,’ and what challenges they face as well as the barriers facing those who are interested in conducting computational social science going forward.
A new survey shoots down the idea that early-career researchers aresomehow more likely to be digital natives and therefore more apt to conduct computational social science than those whose PhDs were issued more than a decade ago.
Political scientists Gary King has called on the policymakers and government officials in the audience to consider enacting a ‘treaty’ on the collection, retention, access and sharing of big data that could serve the needs of the academic world, the commercial world and government while protecting the interests of the public.
Mylynn Felt, author of a popular paper on social media and the social sciences, hopes to see a growing blend of established qualitative techniques with newly emerging big data research methods in future social science work.
Even if you say you don’t mind the government knowing what you do on social media, recent research suggests you tamp down your own opinions when reminded of the possibility of being found out.
Computers have revolutionized academic research – and at the same time created a new crop of problems. But, suggests Ben Marwick, computers can also help address some of the challenges they have created.