Social Networks and Social Contagion: Web Analytics and Computational Social Science: Papers from the AAAI Symposium
Samarth Swaru, Chair
With the emergence of computational social science as a field of collaboration between computer scientists and social scientists, the study of social networks and processes on these networks (social contagion) has been gaining interest. Many topics of traditional sociological interest (such as the diffusion of innovations, emergence of norms, identification of influencer) can now be studied using detailed computational models and extensive simulation. The advent and popularity of online social media also allows the creation of massive data sets, which can inform models and underlying sociological theory. The ubiquity of "smart devices" (such as smart phones) also provides opportunities to gather extensive data on the behaviors and interactions of humans in "real space". In this context, web analytics aims to understand individual and collective behaviors to further model and support knowledge extraction in applications such as cybersecurity, recommendation systems and human computation systems.