Decoding the Social World

Social life is full of paradoxes. Our intentional actions often trigger outcomes that we did not intend or even envision. How do we explain those unintended effects and what can we do to regulate them? In this talk, I will discuss research that illustrates how data science and digital traces help us solve the puzzle of unintended consequences?offering the solution to a social paradox that has intrigued thinkers for centuries. Communication has always been the force that makes a collection of people more than the sum of individuals, but only now can we explain why: digital technologies have made it possible to parse the information we generate by being social in new, imaginative ways. Yet we must look at that data, I will argue, through the lens of theories that capture the nature of social life. The technologies we use, in the end, are also a manifestation of the social world we inhabit. In this talk I will discuss how the unpredictability of social life relates to communication networks, social influence, and the unintended effects that derive from individual decisions. I will focus on empirical research in the field of political communication, with special emphasis on the analysis of social media, mobilization dynamics, exposure to information, and news consumption. I will describe how communication generates social dynamics in aggregate (leading to episodes of ?collective effervescence") and I will discuss the mechanisms that underlie large-scale diffusion, when information and behavior spread ?like wildfire." I will use the theory of networks to illuminate why collective outcomes can differ drastically even when they arise from the same individual actions. By opening the black box of unintended effects, and how they relate to communication dynamics, I hope to identify strategies for social intervention and illuminate policy implications?and how data science and the analysis of digital traces embolden critical thinking in a world that is constantly changing.