Social research in the age of a data driven economy and society Социальный компьютинг : основы , технологии развития , социально - гуманитарные эффекты Московский педагогический государственный университет Moscow State Pedagogical University Moscow, 1st December ROBERT MANCHIN, Center for Big Data, Institute for Advanced Studies, Koszeg
Paradigm change in science always related to revolutions in measurement methods and new tools , resulting in a opportunities to observe the world differently and answering old questions with new insights
Making sense of the new observations on our complex world still needs conceptual frameworks to reflect on the explored data
From Pitirim Sorokin to Michael Burawoy … Closer than ever
context: axial period, great acceleration, interaction between physical and social
URAL-II
An observation panel size of 5 billion on reporting the state of global society?
2 examples for new research agendas for social scientists: economy, politics
after manufacturing… could even highly complex jobs like construction go as well?
AI + algorithms made possible with the exponential growth of computing power: algorithmic society …changing control functions… the future of work is here .. white collar middle class is in danger as well
politics in the age of post-fact world
At which point does society become utterly irrational? Is it the point at which we start segmenting off into alternate realities? CONSEQUENCE: the first wave of social research based on analysis of social media and news site needs a rethink as well
DANGERS
A drink, anybody?
together with digitalization of economy, society and everyday life: emergence of digital social science; a few examples • Open data movement create easy access to digitalized history records and process-produced records of daily activities of institutions • Linked Open Data tools .. makes context rich social science analysis a reality • Social network analysis tools and visualization makes the communication of results more accessible • twitter as a source: follower networks, #hashtag spread, meme research, retweet analysis • wayback machine: historical developments, linkages • instagram: visual sociology’s best friend • iTunes, Spotify, etc. playlists, preferences: sociology of popular culture • web of science, Google Scholar, Scopus: new scientometrics • wikipedia: politics of representation, public memory, generation of citizen science, … • web hyperlinks: issue networks globally, locally, underlying structures… • Google resources: culturomics, historical sociology, search analysis, … • etc. etc. etc.
The future PRISM of the Social Scientist: Linked Open Data Cloud “Linking Open Data cloud diagram, by Richard Cyganiak and Anja Jentzsch. http://lod-cloud.net/”
what it means for the future of social research: • ability to develop more sophisticated, finer grained models of human life • a shift from • data-scarce speculations to data-rich studies of societies • from static snapshots to dynamic, longitudinal analytical frameworks • from misleading aggregates to high resolution observations • resolution and variety of data combined with the new analytical techniques, partially helps the inherent reductionism, promising a more sensitive, nuanced analysis, understanding emergent properties and complex systems • GOING BACK TO THE BASIC ROOTS OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES — combination of OBSERVATION + EXPERIMENTATION, allowing for social relevant science
How disruptive the new social science? • fundamentally altered nature of data, making sense of temporal and spatial context, looking at social relations and networks instead of isolated individuals… • the link between data generation - analysis makes possible to ask old and new questions and answer in new ways • emergence of new paradigms, further pluralism in approaches, conceptual and methodological challenges across social sciences and humanities… • facilitating non-disciplinary research • BUT NOT WITHOUT raising significant ethical and political questions
questions ? uAsk from iAsk.hu address below robert.manchin@iAsk.hu Thank you
Recommend
More recommend