Computational Modeling of Social Processes and Social Networks

Dear Colleagues,

The field of computational social science is currently going through a crucial period of development. The growing availability of data on social dynamics provide more opportunities to apply methods from mathematical modeling, statistical physics, social psychology, behavioral economics, and network theory and to thus elaborate upon comprehensive analytical descriptions of social phenomena. Nonetheless, all of these approaches still find it difficult to capture the complexity of social systems. There is no doubt that there is a need for further theoretical and empirical research aimed at exploring how people’s opinions and behavior change over time, how social networks (both real-world and online) self-organize and evolve, and why echo chambers persist in the online environment. Furthermore, this knowledge has to be instrumentalized so as to combat the dissemination of misinformation and dangerous content, mitigate polarization between and within nations, and provide and sustain cooperation in the face of current and future global challenges.

This Special Issue intends to publish original research whereby different computational methods are applied to investigate a range of social phenomena, such as collective action and prosocial behavior, opinion formation, information dissemination, and social network evolution. Both theoretical and empirical studies are encouraged. In our opinion, special attention should be devoted to linking the theoretical and empirical aspects of modeling the role of social media platforms in social dynamics as well as to studying the impact of ranking algorithms on the organization of information environment. Research on opinion mining and sentiment analysis are also welcome.

Dr. Ivan Kozitsin
Dr. Anastasia Peshkovskaya
Dr. Alexander Petrov
Prof. Dr. Gholamreza Jafari
Guest Editors

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