Archive for the ‘Research’ Category

I am late, I know… I came back last week from the NTTS (New Techniques and Technologies for Statistics) 2013 conference in Brussels and have not yet had a minute to stop and write down my impressions. Fortunately I live-tweeted during the conference, so I haven’t completely lost trace of my thoughts while there… let […]


Just as an additional part of my interview on data has come out on SFR Player, I am preparing to attend a major conference on data and statistics next week in Brussels, with participation of national statistical institutes from European and other countries. Official statisticians who mainly used to do surveys, now fully realize the […]


I was interviewd by SFR PLAYER (an online magazine published by SFR, a major Telecom provider in France) on the changes induced by the use of big data in my work as a social science researcher. The video interview (in French) is available here. The same issue features an interview with danah boyd and various […]


I was yesterday at the Just-in-Time-Sociology (JITSO) workshop in Lausanne (oh, how I still like this town, after such a long time!). JITSO was a small-scale, nice and friendly event for like-minded social researchers, who feel the urge to use their baggage of theories and techniques to provide science-informed responses to today’s fast-paced social, political […]


Hello everyone, You have probably reached this page after listening to my talk on Mobs and mobiles – the “dark side” of social media in relation to the 2011 UK riots, which was broadcast yesterday on BBC Radio 3 as part of its transmission “The Essay“, in a 5-episode series entitled “At the speed of […]


The IAOS conference in Kiev, now just over, has been a great opportunity to discuss the “open data” movement and how it is radically transforming policy-making. Data, it is hoped, enable citizens to make more informed choices and hold the government to account: expenses, contracts, decisions and even meetings with lobbyists are now subject to […]


Hello everyone, You have probably reached this page after reading an article about our study “Social Media Censorship in Times of Political Unrest – A Social Simulation Experiment with the UK Riots” (published in the journal Bulletin of Sociological Methodology, vol. 115, n. 1). This post will provide some background information. Read the study First […]


The rise of social media has brought a new life to the academic field of social network analysis (commonly referred to as SNA). Traditionally grounded in sociology with applications to neighbouring fields such as management and education, it has now expanded to a variety of other disciplines including economics, geography, psychology, science studies and even […]


It’s already one week since I came back from the latest conference of IASSIST, the international association of data professionals. I now know several people in the field and I am becoming increasingly interested in data issues! To be sure, many of the topics they address are very technical and unlikely to concern many beyond […]


I have just come back home from the annual conference of the British Sociological Association in Leeds. Lots of participants, excellent organisation, and a surprisingly nice (though rainy and chilly!) town with a modern, functional, well-equipped campus. Overall, however, a sense of unease prevailed. Perhaps it was the very theme of the conference: “Sociology in […]



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