In this episode, Emese Domahidi (TU Ilmenau) and Mario Haim (LMU Munich) talk to David Lazer (Northeastern U in Boston, MA), distinguished professor of political science as well as computer science and one of the founding fathers of the broader field of computational social science. With a focus on mis- and disinformation, we learn from him why it is so difficult to measure human behavior both and why it has become both more challenging but also more adressable online. Of course, we touch ethical and legal questions in this regard as well as the global inequalities when it comes to research and data access. And we talk where computational social science is currently at and what should and will be the next big steps in this emerging field. Oh, and of course you will notice that, while we were already short on time, we recorded this episode shortly after rumors were confirmed that Elon Musk wanted to buy Twitter but before said individual pulled back out of the acquisition process.
References
Lazer, D., Hargittai, E., Freelon, D., Gonzalez-Bailon, S., Munger, K., Ognyanova, K., & Radford, J. (2021). Meaningful measures of human society in the twenty-first century. Nature, 595(7866), 189–196. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03660-7
Lazer, D. M. J., Pentland, A., Watts, D. J., Aral, S., Athey, S., Contractor, N., Freelon, D., Gonzalez-Bailon, S., King, G., Margetts, H., Nelson, A., Salganik, M. J., Strohmaier, M., Vespignani, A., & Wagner, C. (2020). Computational social science: Obstacles and opportunities. Science, 369(6507), 1060–1062. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaz8170
Lazer, D., Pentland, A., Adamic, L., Aral, S., Barabási, A.-L., Brewer, D., Christakis, N., Contractor, N., Fowler, J., Gutmann, M., Jebara, T., King, G., Macy, M., Roy, D., & Alstyne, M. V. (2009). Computational social science. Science, 323(5915), 721–723. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1167742
What is it about computational communication science?