Science of Science in the Spotlight (SciSci) is committed to provide a forum for multidisciplinary research exchanges in the field of Science of Science in Luxembourg through international collaborations with leading experts from complementary cognate research fields and disciplines.
Using computational methods to study social structure and behavior at scale requires researchers to make a plethora of decisions, including how to sample and preprocess data, implement algorithms, and validate results. I present findings and lessons learned from my group’s work on assessing the impact of some of these choices, especially related to data provenance and selecting variables and metrics, on understanding social systems and validating social science theories in contemporary settings. I highlight sources of biases and strategies for mitigating biased insights. Bringing this work into application contexts, I discuss how we leveraged computational social science approaches to study the impact of information, science, and funding on society, and highlight some of our research in crisis informatics