Social Networks Meet Social Science © Sergey Chernov Center for the Study of New Media and Society, New Economic School, Moscow schernov@nes.ru understanding characteristics and mechanisms of a Abstract modern society. Such division of competencies creates Computer science research community devoted a a need for the interdisciplinary research teams and a special attention to the studies of online social number of highly visible research papers were produced networks. In the meantime, we observed that by consortia of social and data processing experts. algorithms and data processing techniques are To provide an overview of problems and challenges often not enough to fully exploit research potential addressed by the social sciences using online networking of social data available. One needs a set of models data, we selected a set of publications from four and methods explaining social interaction to pose aforementioned branches of social sciences. Each study is meaningful questions on the wealth of data. This is summarized into a key research question, a method used and a moment when social sciences come into a a general outcome. We grouped these works by the field of picture providing the necessary tools and study, while some papers might be attributed to two or more knowledge. Here we review some research papers disciplines. We also made an attempt to mention some on online social networks, which have been national papers where applicable. Finally, some relevant published in the fields of economics, sociology, studies completed with support from the Center for the psychology and political science. We hope, such Study of New Media and Society were added to the picture. an interdisciplinary view on the social network research might help to eliminate existing gap 2 Psychology between information management experts and An interesting compilation of papers on online scholars from social sciences. addiction is prepared by Kuss and Griffiths [19]. One of the most comprehensive reviews of psychologically oriented 1 Introduction research using Facebook was done by Wilson, Gosling, and Recent boom of online social networks provided Graham in 2012 [32]. A large volume of more than 400 computer scientists with a lot of new research directions articles has been split into five categories including: into 5 and inspired numerous efficient algorithms for scalable categories: descriptive analysis of users, motivations for network analysis. In addition, it motivated scholars using Facebook, identity presentation, the role of Facebook from social sciences like economics, sociology, in social interactions, and privacy and information psychology and political science, to catch up with disclosure. Descriptive analysis focuses on Facebook users modern data processing techniques. The massive and their typical online behaviour. Motivations part is about datasets of digitized social data attracted social why people use Facebook and identity presentation is about scientists, who rarely worked with terabytes of how they want to look for the outside world. Social information or used scalable data analysis algorithms. interaction category studies relationships between Their usual toolbox is tailored to hundreds and individuals and groups. Finally, privacy and information thousands of data points, which are rather trustworthy disclosure papers target various trade-offs between personal and verifiable. In contrast, contemporary social graphs information sharing and associated risks. are built from millions of nodes and billions of edges, Following the proposed categories, we pick few the data is highly dynamic, incomplete, unreliable and representative papers from each. For example, in-house difficult to interpret. Facebook research lab published in 2011 one of the It is reasonable to assume that online analytical tools largest studies describing inhabitants of the biggest from computer science will be widely adopted by social social network [2, 3, 27]. For the motivation study we scientists in a short term prospective and current take an example addressing psychological well-being technological gap will be eliminated. On the other hand, and increased social capital of the users [23]. A case the social disciplines will stay superior in posing right study of identity representation from [29] confirms old questions on social data, which is a key skill in wisdom that attractive photos are more likely to help in getting new friends than unattractive ones. One recent Proceedings of the 16th All-Russian Conference “Digital work which caught quite some attention in press is Libraries: Advanced Methods and Technologies, Digital devoted to social interactions, in particular, Backstrom Collections” ― RCDL-2014, Dubna, Russia, October and Kleinberg [4] studied possibility of identifying 13–16, 2014. romantic relationship between two people based on 10 their network neighborhood alone. The results are 6 Conclusions promising and might lead to finding structurally significant people in various online applications. This survey is a minor step towards better cooperation between computer science and social 3 Sociology sciences communities. A set of research problems listed above is not exhaustive by any means, but rather a basic The methods of sociological research could be selection for future development. We hope, interested considered as the most demanded from the computer readers will follow the way of diving into alien, but science community. Several basic notions in social interesting research disciplines, and will find necessary network analysis have deep roots in sociology, starting bits of knowledge, which are invisible within their from the famous works by Granovetter granovetter1973 native research circle. or by Travers and Milgram [25]. A good introductions into a sociological prospective on modern social References network analysis include work by Marin and Wellman [20] or by Hansen, Shneiderman and Smith [16], while [1] Acquisti, A., and Fong, C.M. An Experiment in a standard textbook in this area belongs to Faust Hiring Discrimination Via Online Social andWasserman [30]. Among research topics addressed Networks. Social Science Research Network by modern sociologists we observe a popular thema of Working Paper Series (Apr. 2012). geo-dependencies of social ties, which has already [2] Backstrom, L. Anatomy of Facebook. produced several crossdisciplinary teams [22, 24, 28]. https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebookdata- Another hot topic is a cascade-behavior prediction [7, team/anatomy-offacebook/10150388519243859, 13], which promises numerous potential benefits for the 2011. [Online; accessed 25-May-2014]. information diffusion applications. A more specific task [3] Backstrom, L., Boldi, P., Rosa, M., Ugander, J., in the same direction is measuring the influence on and Vigna, S. Four degrees of separation. CoRR information sharing of each particular node [5]. abs/1111.4570 (2011). [4] Backstrom, L., and Kleinberg, J.M. Romantic 4 Economics partnerships and the dispersion of social ties: a Thanks to the excellent textbooks by Matthew Jackson network analysis of relationship status on [18] and by Easley and Kleinberg [9], we currently have a facebook. In CSCW (2014), S. R. Fussell, W. G. good overview of the role of social networks in economics. Lutters, M. R. Morris, and M. Reddy, Eds., ACM, For a short intro in this area one is advised to look at a pp. 831–841. brief summary [17]. However, economics research is often [5] Bakshy, E., Hofman, J.M., Mason, W.A., and focused on small-scale networks from offline world, rather Watts, D.J. Everyone’s an influencer: Quantifying than on massive online datasets. Situation is changing influence on twitter. 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