Dear colleagues,
we organize a workshop on concept formation and theory building in the
era of computational social sciences. The workshop will take place on
June 12-13, 2025 in Bremen. Travel expenses for presenting participants
can be partially reimbursed. The workshop is in particular relevant for
scholars working at the intersection of theory building and social
network analysis (with digital data).
The Call for Papers is attached below. Looking forward to your
contributions!
Insa, Josefa, Thomas, and Sarah
--
Sarah Tell, M.A.
Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin
SOCIUM - Forschungszentrum Ungleichheit und Sozialpolitik
Universität Bremen
Mary-Somerville-Straße 9
D-28359 Bremen
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*New Data, New Concepts? Sociological Theory and Big Data in the Era of
Computational Social Sciences*
Organizers: Insa Pruisken, Josefa Loebell, Sarah Tell, Thomas Kern
(University of Bremen)
June 12-13, 2025, Haus der Wissenschaft, Bremen
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The digital age has brought about an unprecedented availability of new
and diverse data sources (Macy, 2015, p. 2). Social media platforms,
websites, digital archives, sensor networks, and transactional records
provide vast quantities of information about human behavior,
interaction, and social organization. This influx of new kinds of data
has been accompanied by the rapid development of methods to analyze it,
particularly within the emerging field of /Computational Social
Sciences/. Methods such as social network analysis, quantitative text
analysis, and machine learning have advanced significantly and found
applications far beyond sociology, extending into fields such as
computer science, information science, and social physics (e.g., Tindall
et al., 2022). Meanwhile, artificial intelligence and machine learning
are increasingly employed to extract patterns, predict behaviors, and
model social phenomena (e.g., Borch & Pardo-Guerra, 2023). At the same
time, methods have emerged that allow for the analysis of large volumes
of textual data (e.g., Evans & Aceves, 2016; Macanovic, 2022; Nelson,
2020). These tools and techniques have transformed the ways in which we
approach, frame, and analyze social data.
While computational methods and data analytics have expanded our
technical capabilities, there is a growing recognition that sociological
theory has not evolved at the same pace to adequately address and
interpret the complexities of the digital era. Existing theories often
struggle to incorporate or make sense of digital phenomena, leading to a
gap between empirical findings and theoretical understanding (e.g.,
Bonikowski & Nelson, 2022; Schwarz, 2021, p. 2). Simultaneously, the
traditional role of social theory is fundamentally changing. The
challenge shifts “from thinking about the most cost-effective data that
one needs to collect in order to support, or refute, a hypothesis, to
figuring out how to structure a mountain of data into meaningful
categories of knowledge” (Goldberg, 2015, p. 2).
To address this challenge, sociologists must engage in /conceptual and
theoretical innovation/. This involves revising and expanding conceptual
frameworks to make them compatible with and relevant to the analysis of
digital data. Such an endeavor would not only strengthen the explanatory
power of sociology but also enhance its capacity to provide meaningful
interpretations of digital interactions, structures, and their societal
implications.
We ask for contributions that study processes both at the conceptual and
interpretative level of social theory and address at least one of the
following questions:
(1) How do core sociological concepts evolve in the context of processes
such as datafication and platformiza¬tion? What do notions like “action”
and “agency,” “communication,” or “interaction” mean in the digital
space? How should foundational concepts like “social structures” and
“order formation” be reinterpreted when they emerge on platforms? What
constitutes digital actors and digital “identities”?
(2) How do digital platforms – as new forms of social organization –
influence the differentiation of society? How do they affect social
inequality? How does the culture of society change in relation to its
social structure? How are processes of social inequality reconfigured in
the digital era?
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*Workshop Format and Submission Guidelines*
The workshop is aimed at scholars at various stages of their academic
careers. We are seeking contributions that advance the development of
sociological theory and, at the same time, engage empirically with
digital data or apply methods from Computational Social Sciences. The
central question guiding this workshop is to articulate the challenges
that arise for sociological theory in response to the engagement with
“new data.”
Please send your short paper (3 to 5 pages) to Insa Pruisken
(pruisken(a)uni-bremen.de <mailto:pruisken@uni-bremen.de>), Josefa Loebell
(loebell(a)uni-bremen.de <mailto:loebell@uni-bremen.de>), Sarah Tell
(sarah.tell(a)uni-bremen.de <mailto:sarah.tell@uni-bremen.de>), and Thomas
Kern (thomas.kern(a)uni-bremen.de <mailto:thomas.kern@uni-bremen.de>).
Submission date is *February 14, 2025*.
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*References*
Bonikowski, B., & Nelson, L. K. (2022). From Ends to Means: The Promise
of Computational Text Analysis for Theoretically Driven Sociological
Research. Sociological Methods & Research, 51(4), 1469–1483.
Borch, C., & Pardo-Guerra, J. (Eds.). (2023). The Oxford Handbook of the
Sociology of Machine Learning. Oxford University Press.
Evans, J. A., & Aceves, P. (2016). Machine Translation: Mining Text for
Social Theory. Annual Review of Sociology, 42, 21–50.
Goldberg, A. (2015). In defense of forensic social science. Big Data &
Society, 2(2), 1–3.
Macanovic, A. (2022). Text mining for social science: The state and the
future of computational text analysis in sociology. Social Science
Research, 108, 102784.
Macy, M. W. (2016). An Emerging Trend: Is Big Data the End of Theory? In
R. A. Scott & M. C. Buchmann (Eds.), Emerging Trends in the Social and
Behavioral Sciences (pp. 1–14). Wiley.
Nelson, L. K. (2020). Computational Grounded Theory: A Methodological
Framework. Sociological Methods & Research, 49(1), 3–42.
Schwarz, O. (2021). Sociological Theory for Digital Society: The Codes
that Bind Us Together. Polity Press.
Tindall, D., McLevey, J., Koop-Monteiro, Y., & Graham, A. (2022). Big
data, computational social science, and other recent innovations in
social network analysis. Canadian Review of Sociology, 59(2), 271–288.