Summary

This is a seminar course. By reading and discussing an introductory book as well as research papers about computational social science, students will become familiar with core issues and techniques in the field.

Content

Data collected through digital systems, such as online social networks, search engines, mobile phones, apps, etc., offer great opportunities for addressing important research questions about individual as well as collective human behavior. Whereas such issues had previously been studied primarily by social scientists, the sheer size of modern social data sets, as well as the fact that they are produced within computational systems, requires computational ways of thinking about, and processing, them.

The goal of this seminar is to acquaint students with some of the fundamental questions and techniques arising in the context of computational social science.

We will explore the above topics simultaneously in two ways:

• We will read the book Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age by Matthew Salganik (available online for free).
• We will read research papers from computational social science that provide a deep dive into the topics(s) discussed in the book.

Every week, we will focus on one book chapter and one accompanying paper (and sometimes additional complementary materials). All students will write a short summary and review of the respective paper, and one student will lead the in-class discussion, which will be about the paper as well as the book chapter etc. Beyond familiarizing themselves with research in the field, students will become better at assessing and critiquing scholarly work (by discussing and reviewing papers).

Through this course, students will obtain an overview of the research questions posed in computational social science, and of the tools and techniques available. Moreover, they will increase their ability to summarize and critique scientific papers.

Previous years: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017.

Logistics

• Coursebook listing
• Time: Tuesays, 10:15 – 12:00, 23 February – 1 June 2021
• Location: The course will be held entirely online, on Zoom: https://epfl.zoom.us/j/369191740 (passcode: 811811)
• Paper reviews should be submitted via EasyChair by Sunday 23:59
• Everybody is welcome to join us as a guest in reading and discussing the papers listed below (for as many or few papers as they like)!

Schedule

• Weekly themes and chapter numbers refer to the Bit by Bit book.
• Weekly readings include the book chapter from Bit by Bit and the weekly paper (and additional materials where indicated). Chapters should be read fully by the first week in which a chapter is discussed.
• Discussion leaders should guide a discussion about the paper as well as the more general context provided by the book chapter (and any additional material they deem worthy of talking about).
• To make things easier, here are all papers in a single zip file.

Week 1 (23 February)

Introduction and logistics [slides]

Week 2: Observing behavior (chapter 2) (2 March)

Discussion leader: Martin Josifoski

@article{pena2021does, title={Does relative age affect fame? Ask Wikipedia}, author={Pablo A. Peña, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz}, booktitle={Education Economics}, pages={1--14}, year={2021}, url={papers/pena2021does.pdf} }

Week 3: Observing behavior (chapter 2) (9 March)

Discussion leader: Alexandre Fauquette

@article{greenland1999causal, title={Causal diagrams for epidemiologic research}, author={Sander Greenland, Judea Pearl, James M. Robins}, booktitle={Epidemiology}, volume={10}, number={1}, pages={37--48}, year={1999}, url={papers/greenland1999causal.pdf} }

Also read chapter 4 of Judea Pearl, Dana Mackenzie: The Book of Why, Basic Books, 2018 (no review required).

Week 4: Observing behavior (chapter 2) (16 March)

Discussion leader: Kristina Gligorić (guest)

@article{rosenbaum2020modern, title={Modern algorithms for matching in observational studies}, author={Paul R. Rosenbaum}, booktitle={Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application}, volume={7}, pages={143--176}, year={2020}, url={papers/rosenbaum2020modern.pdf} }

Also read chapter 5 of Paul R. Rosenbaum: Observation and Experiment, Harvard University Press, 2017 (no review required).

Week 5: Observing behavior (chapter 2) (23 March)

Discussion leader: Sandra Siby

@article{zhu2020content, title={Content growth and attention contagion in information networks: Addressing information poverty on Wikipedia}, author={Kai Zhu, Dylan Walker, Lev Muchnik}, booktitle={Information Systems Research}, volume={31}, number={2}, pages={491--509}, year={2020}, url={papers/zhu2020content.pdf} }

Also read chapter 6 of Paul R. Rosenbaum: Observation and Experiment, Harvard University Press, 2017 (no review required).

Week 6: Observing behavior (chapter 2) (30 March)

Discussion leader: Yann Yasser Haddad

@article{jara2019medium, title={How the medium shapes the message: Printing and the rise of the arts and sciences}, author={C. Jara-Figueroa, Amy Z. Yu, César A. Hidalgo}, booktitle={PLOS One}, volume={14}, number={2}, pages={e0205771}, year={2019}, url={papers/jara2019medium.pdf} }

Week 7 (6 April)

No meeting (Easter week)

Week 8: Asking questions (chapter 3) (13 April)

Discussion leader: Maria Gaci

@article{salganik2015wiki, title={Wiki surveys: Open and quantifiable social data collection}, author={Matthew J. Salganik, Karen E.C. Levy}, booktitle={PLOS One}, volume={10}, number={5}, pages={e0123483}, year={2015}, url={papers/salganik2015wiki.pdf} }

Week 9: Running experiments (chapter 4) (20 April)

Discussion leader: Prabhu Teja Sivaprasad

@article{allcott2020welfare, title={The welfare effects of social media}, author={Hunt Allcott, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer, Matthew Gentzkow}, booktitle={American Economic Review}, volume={110}, number={3}, pages={629--76}, year={2020}, url={papers/allcott2020welfare.pdf} }

Week 10: Running experiments (chapter 4) (27 April)

Discussion leader: Marija Šakota

@article{hinnosaar2019wikipedia, title={Wikipedia matters}, author={Marit Hinnosaar, Toomas Hinnosaar, Michael E. Kummer, Olga Slivko}, booktitle={SSRN}, year={2019}, url={papers/hinnosaar2019wikipedia.pdf} }

Also read chapters 1 and 2 of Paul R. Rosenbaum: Observation and Experiment, Harvard University Press, 2017 (no review required).

Week 11: Running experiments (chapter 4) (4 May)

Discussion leader: Vinitra Swamy

@article{shu2012signing, title={Signing at the beginning makes ethics salient and decreases dishonest self-reports in comparison to signing at the end}, author={Lisa L. Shu, Nina Mazar, Francesca Gino, Dan Ariely, Max H. Bazerman}, booktitle={Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences}, volume={109}, number={38}, pages={15197--15200}, year={2012}, url={papers/shu2012signing.pdf} } @article{kristal2020signing, title={Signing at the beginning versus at the end does not decrease dishonesty}, author={Ariella S. Kristal, Ashley V. Whillans, Max H. Bazerman, Francesca Gino, Lisa L. Shu, Nina Mazar, Dan Ariely}, booktitle={Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences}, volume={117}, number={13}, pages={7103--7107}, year={2020}, url={papers/kristal2020signing.pdf} }

Also read chapters 3 and 4 of Paul R. Rosenbaum: Observation and Experiment, Harvard University Press, 2017 (no review required).

Week 12 (11 May)

No meeting.

Week 13: Creating mass collaboration (chapter 5) (18 May)

Discussion leader: Haeeun Kim

@article{allahbakhsh2013quality, title={Quality control in crowdsourcing systems: Issues and directions}, author={Mohammad Allahbakhsh, Boualem Benatallah, Aleksandar Ignjatovic, Hamid Reza Motahari-Nezhad, Elisa Bertino, Schahram Dustdar}, booktitle={IEEE Internet Computing}, volume={17}, number={2}, pages={76--81}, year={2013}, url={papers/allahbakhsh2013quality.pdf} } @article{ahn2008designing, title={Designing games with a purpose}, author={Luis von Ahn, Laura Dabbish}, booktitle={Communications of the ACM}, volume={51}, number={8}, pages={58--67}, year={2008}, url={papers/ahn2008designing.pdf}, misc={(No review required.)} }

Week 14: Creating mass collaboration (chapter 5) (25 May)

Discussion leader: William Andrew Simon

@inproceedings{yu2014distributed, title={Distributed analogical idea generation: Inventing with crowds}, author={Lixiu Yu, Aniket Kittur, Robert E. Kraut}, booktitle={Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems}, pages={1245--1254}, year={2014}, url={papers/yu2014distributed.pdf} }

Week 15: Ethics (chapter 6) (1 June)

Discussion leader: Zhen Wei

@article{moss2020ethical, title={Is it ethical to use Mechanical Turk for behavioral research? Relevant data from a representative survey of MTurk participants and wages}, author={Aaron J. Moss, Cheskie Rosenzweig, Jonathan Robinson, Leib Litman}, booktitle={PsyArXiv}, year={2020}, url={papers/moss2020ethical.pdf} }