Computational Social Science: A Complex Contagion

Computational social science is a multidisciplinary umbrella that includes a wide array of analytic approaches enabled by universal access to high performance computing: computer simulation, deep learning, natural language processing, and data wrangling with digital traces of millions of online interactions. The importance of social network analysis across these diverse methodologies opened an opportunity for Sociology to become the disciplinary home of a game-changing field. In this chapter I address the discipline’s curious reluctance to embrace that opportunity as I recount my personal involvement in computational social science over five decades, focusing on the foundational research questions that have motivated the field.