Social Science Space

The saga of the UK’s contact tracing app(s) should be an object lesson in how not to approach the use of technology in public policy – and why politicians in particular need to step back and rethink their approach to technology, and in particular to privacy.

Census data can be pretty sensitive – it’s not just how many people live in a neighborhood, a town, a […]

In an age where issues of ethnicity and identity matter, as well, as in the United States, political representation, the import and impact of censuses, along with how they are structured, carried out and analyzed, matters greatly. And with the U.S. Census being conducted this year – today, April 1, is Census Day, although coronavirus-marred collection of data will continue until August 14 – this is an apt time to talk with author Andrew Whitby about censuses past, present and future.

Text Wash, a new software tool that anonymizes personally identifiable text data, making it accessible to social scientists without compromising its usability for research, has just won the SAGE Concept Grant. This year’s award comes to roughly $30,000.

Social Science Space is presenting 10 shortlisted essays written by young social scientists in an ESRC competition looking at how social science might change the world in the next half century. This week we present Sam Miles’ question of whether greater exposure to the cyberworld is creating a dystopia or a utopia.

You donate your money to charity, your blood to other and your time to special causes. So why not give of your data for science research?

A new survey of the British public finds it has serious concerns about sharing data with just about everyone, even with institutions is otherwise respects deeply.

Modern-day organizations increasingly are seeking to create an “open” work environment—one that makes workers more observable—theorizing that transparency boosts performance. […]

As a social scientist I find it interesting to seek out topics for study that no-one else seems to have […]