The recent availability of large-scale databases, coupled with computational techniques from network science, artificial intelligence, physics, and natural-language processing have opened new possibilities to study and understand social phenomena. This highly interdisciplinary field is called Social Data Science (or Computational Social Science). In this session, we aim to unite researchers, policymakers, data scientists, and practitioners interested broadly in using computational methods to understand and model various aspects of human behavior.

With great power comes great responsibility. Therefore, this workshop aims to engage all attendees in a critical discussion of the future of Social Data Science. Where should our energy be spent? What are the biggest unanswered questions which we need to address now, both globally, and in Denmark? How can we push for these tools to be used for good, rather than for bad? To spark discussions, we invite four speakers who will give brief talks on the biggest open questions, ethical dilemmas, and concerns in their work. Afterwards, we will facilitate a discussion amongst all participants to identify questions for social data scientists in Denmark. As a final output of the workshop, we aim to draft a community position paper on problems social data scientists should focus on both globally and in a Danish context.

Program

Welcome (5 minutes)

4 x 5 min presentations to provide discussion points on what are the key issues / topics (20 minutes)

Broad discussion with the audience with 2-3 facilitators (45 minutes)

Synthesizing discussions and jointly outlining a short document on the state of social data science (20 minutes)

Speakers

• Two representatives from Academia (TBC, one junior and one senior researcher)
• A representative from industry (TBC)
• A representative from a non-governmental organization (TBC)

Target audience

The session is for practitioners, policymakers, and researchers with an interest in applying data science, computational social science, network science, and artificial intelligence methods for understanding social phenomena.

Level

The level will be intermediate: attendees should have a basic understanding or some experience with the subjects.

Organizers

• Akhil Arora, Assistant Professor, Aarhus University, SODAS, and P1
• Anastassia Vybornova, Postdoc, SODAS, University of Copenhagen and ITU
• Anders Weile Larsen, PhD Student, IT University of Copenhagen and P1
• Sandro Ferreira Sousa, Assistant Professor, SODAS, University of Copenhagen
• Vedran Sekara, Associate Professor, IT University of Copenhagen (ITU) and P1