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Dr William Housley
- Digital Social Research
- The SOCSI/COMSC Research Network was established in 2010 and is committed to promoting closer collaboration between computer and social scientists in the context of a key area of innovation in social research. Namely Web 2.0 technology, data representation, data harvesting, data analysis, visual analytics and informatics. These efforts will crystallise around the construction of a suite of digital social scientific methodological tools. The group is also concerned with the application and evaluation of existing analytic resources in relation to social scientific questions and problems as well as work concerned with the theorisation and conceptual framing of the emerging contours of digital society. Our empirical research programme is contextualised in terms of the ‘coming crisis of empirical sociology’ (Savage and Burrows, 2007), which is located in the increasing asymmetry between traditional social scientific methods and the power of transactional data generated through the internet. Our projects move beyond this perceived crisis through ground breaking, revolutionary, interdisciplinary engineering solutions for next generation social scientific research. Current projects include the ESRC funded Digital Social Research Tools, Tension Indicators and Safer Communities: a demonstration of the Cardiff Digital Research Platform (Matthew Williams, William Housley, Adam Edwards, Malcolm Williams, SOCSI and Omer Rana and Nick Avis COMSC). This work will assist in the practical facilitation of the proposed Cardiff Digital Research Platform (CDRP). With the explosion in social media and the interactive web (Web2.0) the potential for systematic data mining and mixed method analysis in relation to key social science concerns and questions is now possible; the CDRP will provide a means of operationalising a next generation ‘social computational methodological tool kit’. It will also provide a means of augmenting social science research training, building research capacity and shaping the conduct of social inquiry for the 21st century.
