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659 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 6 (2015)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0659 and id is 1 raw text is: Big Data, Digital Media, and Computational Social Science: Possibilities and Perils By DHAVAN V. SHAH, JOSEPH N. CAPPELLA, and W. RUSSELL NEUMAN We live life in the network. We check our e-mails regularly, make mobile phone calls from almost any location ... make purchases with credit cards ... [and] maintain friendships through online social networks. ... These transactions leave digital traces that can be compiled into compre- hensive pictures of both individual and group behavior, with the potential to transform our understanding of our lives, organizations, and societies. -Lazer et al. (2009, 721). Powerful computational resources combined with the availability of massive social media data- sets has given rise to a growing body of work that uses a combination of machine learning, natural language processing, network analysis, and statis- tics for the measurement of population structure and human behavior at unprecedented scale. However, mounting evidence suggests that many of the forecasts and analyses being produced misrepresent the real world. -Ruths and Pfeffer (2014, 1063) The exponential growth in the volume, velocity and variability (Dumbill 2012, 2) of structured and unstructured social data has confronted fields such as political science, soci- ology, psychology, information systems, public health, public policy, and communication with a unique challenge: how can scientists best use computational tools to analyze such data, prob- lematical as they may be, with the goal of understanding individuals and their interac- tions within social systems? The unprecedented availability of information on discrete behav- Dhavan V Shah is the Louis A. & Mary E. Maier- Bascom Professor at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, where he is director of the Mass Communication Research Center His work focuses on framing effects on social judgments, digital media influ- ence on civic engagement, and the impact of health ICTs. DOI: 10.1177/0002716215572084 ANNALS, AAPSS, 659, May 2015 6

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