Social Science Space

As part of a pioneering effort to systematically use privacy-protected Facebook data to study the platform’s impact on democracy, the Social Science Research Council and its partner Social Science One have named the inaugural recipients of the Social Media and Democracy Research Grants.

The president of the Social Science Research Council argues that that proliferation of data, data sharing and collaboration across private, government, and academic sectors requires a stewardship that social science can, at least in part, provide.

In launching its first-ever task force report on Monday, the 95-year-old Social Science Research Council made clear it gets by with a little help from its friends. Collaboration, said sociologist Alondra Nelson Nelson, the president of the SSRC, is the byword of the report, To Secure Knowledge: Social Science Partnerships for the Common Good.

Sheila Sen Jasanoff, the founder and director of Harvard University’s Program on Science, Technology and Society, will receive the Social Science Research Council’s highest honor, the Albert O. Hirschman Prize, and deliver the Hirschman lecture — “Theory, Critique, and Discipline in a Post-Truth Age” — on November 30

The Social Science Research Council’s Social Data Initiative, which aims to provide the social science research community with secure, reliable access to proprietary social media data, is seeking the first requests for proposals for its Social Media and Democracy Research Grants competition in collaboration with Social Science One.

The Social Science Research Council has added Melissa Nobles and Jennifer Richeson to its board of directors. Nobles is the Kenan […]

This stark contrast between the internet’s light and dark sides has become a defining characteristic of the digital age, writes Timo Hannay founder SchoolDash, but is not an inevitable consequence of the mostly innocuous technologies on which it’s built. Rather, it is the product of their bewilderingly diverse and eccentric user base – otherwise known as humanity.

We spoke with social-science ethicists about how well Facebook’s initiative appears to protect users’ privacy. They’re skeptical, but still eager to see Facebook data studied.

In receiving the SAGE-CASBS Award, Ken Prewitt, a champion for scholarly knowledge, suggests there is no applied or basic science, only science in use and science soon to be used.

The Social Science Research Council’s Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship Program is an interdisciplinary training program that helps early-stage doctoral students […]

The founder of the academic publisher SAGE has given the Social Science Research Council $3 million from her own pocket […]

A transdisciplinary investigation into ‘The City’ sponsored offered hard truths and rays of hope for the urban future most of us will face.