The CSSC Team (Giampiero Giacomello and Oltion Preka) participating in the PNRR SERICS07- EcoCyber Program won (Project no. IsCb9_DQC class C) the assignment of a Virtual Machine (VM) on GALILEO100 (8000 hours) to be used on the Data project Quality for Cybersecurity for the development of synthetic data at the CINECA Consortium for ISCRA (Italian SuperComputing Resource Allocation) application. It is a unique event for the Social Sciences, given that engineering, physics and biology projects usually participate in these calls.
The Summer Institute in Computational Social Science is returning to Bologna and will invite 12 (twelve) participants who will have the opportunity to attend and participate in the entire two-week mixed programme at no cost to the programme. We welcome applications from advanced master's students, Ph.D. and postdoctoral researchers, and untenured faculty within 7 years of their Ph.D. from all backgrounds and fields of study, especially applicants from groups currently under-represented in Computational Social Science.
Go to page
In this recent paper, the experts interviewed indicates the social sciences as one of the relevant elements of AI policies of the future: C. Weir, A. Dyson, O. Jogunola, L. Dennis and K. Paxton-Fear, "Interlinked Computing in 2040: Safety, Truth, Ownership, and Accountability," in Computer, vol. 57, no. 1, pp. 59-68, Jan. 2024, doi: 10.1109/MC.2023.3318377.
keywords: {Market research; Safety; Complexity theory; Artificial intelligence; Interconnected systems}.
Cyberspace and cybersecurity are terms that have now entered common language, many know that, in some way, cybersecurity has to do with passwords and software updates; while only a few know that it also concerns spam and phishing, but almost no one knows what a/symmetric key cryptography, «0days» and APTs (Advanced Persistent Threats) can be. This is more than understandable, given that cyberspace and the digitalization processes underway today in any sector of social and economic activities are not easy or immediate to understand. By presenting issues ranging from the confidentiality of communications and personal data to elections via the Internet, from cybercrime and cyberterrorism to cyber weapons and cyberwarfare, the aim is to help the reader orient themselves in the transformation process resulting from digitalisation and to understand the central role that cybersecurity has in all of this.
Go to page
To what extent are the pro-Russian military bloggers on Telegram united in assessing the actions of the Russian generals?
Military bloggers have become an important part of the media landscape, covering the war for the Russian audience, and their popularity also affects discussion in mainstream media about the management of the war, thus indirectly affecting the decisions on the battlefield. Therefore, understanding the “digital arena” of milbloggers is essential to comprehending the dynamics of reciprocal influence between media discussion and political behavior. In this short post, we decided to look at how unified the coverage of the activities of the military command by the authors of these telegram channels is. However, this is only a preliminary analysis.
The CssC has prepared a new series of Cyber Mondays. Every Monday we offer a short and interesting lecture about computational social sciences and its application.
Visit our page to enrol.
Good news! The Computational Social Science Centre is now on Mastodon.
Follow us to keep up to date with the latest news in computational social science, social and political science and more.
@CssC@sciences.social
The CssC engages with the most relevant contemporary topics. The armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine has been one of our main focal points. Visit our page to get an overview of our research and data analysis on the Russia-Ukraine war.
Go to page
Owing to their popularity, sports often turn into arenas for political contestation. The practice of taking the knee as a symbolic stance against racism was started in 2016 and is entrenched with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. This practice generated discussions in the Italian public opinion during Euro 2020, where the ambiguous stance of the Italian soccer team contributed to the debate. This article addresses this particular case as an example of more widespread practices of antiracist contestation (and public opinion reactions thereto) in sports, approaching Italian public opinion studies from the underexplored angle of computational social science. We collected tweets featuring the hashtag #iononmiinginocchio (and its variations) throughout the duration of Euro 2020. The language used was analysed through network analysis and toxicity analysis to observe the characteristics of the debate and the rhetoric employed. This research finds that, despite politicians’ media visibility throughout the debate, the Twitter discussion was mainly driven by common citizens. In this context, a toxic language encompassing white supremacist, homophobic, and sexist remarks was often employed with a silencing effect on a wide share of the Twitter usership.
Go to page
The department of political and social sciences of Bologna University is the local host institution of the "Summer Institutes in Computational Social Sciences". The members of the CSSC are co-organizing the event.
Human data Computational social science is a burgeoning field of research that uses analysis of huge data sets to tackle social questions. Digital devices now give real-time access to a wealth of information on our movements, purchases and social interactions online — information that offers unprecedented power to track trends, make predictions and inform decisions. In a special issue this week, Nature probes the possibilities of — and challenges faced by — this growing field. From modelling the dynamics of infectious disease to assessing potential bias in data sets, researchers face huge opportunities to answer key societal questions — as long as they can also maintain the delicate balance of ensuring the quality and privacy of the data being used.
