Computational social science

The social sciences investigate human and social dynamics and organization at all levels of analysis (consilience), including cognition, decision making, behavior, groups, organizations, societies, and the world system. Computational social science is the integrated, interdisciplinary pursuit of social inquiry with emphasis on information processing and through the medium of advanced computation. The main computational social science areas are automated information extraction systems, social network analysis, social geographic information systems (GIS), complexity modeling, and social simulation models. Just like Galileo exploited the telescope as the key instrument for observing and gaining a deeper and empirically truthful understanding of the physical universe, computational social scientists are learning to exploit the advanced and increasingly powerful instruments of computation to see beyond the visible spectrum of more traditional disciplinary analyses. (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.