At the end of February we ran a most enthralling event experience. Three panelists, two hosts and about 20 attendees all put their headsets on from their labs, offices and homes to join a virtual classroom decorated with trees, a castle, a slightly scary tiger and a hippo, to talk about the future of VR in social science research.

Find out more about the field of collective intelligence by tuning into these vox pops, filmed

This blog post outlines what headsets you can use for our next event.

There are currently 3 types of hardware to access visually and audio-immersive experiences: headsets that connect to your PC, headgear that works with your mobile phone, and standalone devices. Besides varying in price, they also differ in their capabilities and hence are intended for different use cases.

We are excited to announce that the finalists for the NYU Coleridge Initiative’s Rich Context Competition have been selected. The competition challenged computer scientists to find ways of automating the discovery of research datasets, fields and methods behind social science research publications.  20 teams from 8 countries submitted letters of intent and four finalists have been chosen. We will be live webcasting the finalists’ presentations as well as the announcement of the winner on February 15.

Virtual Reality technology is opening previously locked doors to researchers in the social sciences. But how viable is it really as a research tool? We take a look back over the history of experimental research in human perception and response to consider the future of VR in experimental design.

It’s an exciting time to be in social science. Social media, digital identities and the world of big data has opened up new ways for social scientists to study and examine social phenomenon.

Some examples include using online search patterns to predict the spread of disease, tracking near real-time Twitter data to understand political movements or using location data to understand interpersonal interactions.

The move to a digital world has created a innovative new area of social science called computational social science (CSS).

Being a data scientist with a sociological background is extremely valuable in trying to answer research questions to advance contemporary humanity. It goes beyond programming skills or just applying algorithms to data.

I recently got jazzed about two findings coming out of the world of computational social science, primarily because they hit so close to my home (hello, junior faculty feeling the pressure to produce)

In June, I attended the second iteration of the Summer Institute for Computational Social Science (SICSS), an intensive two-week program held at Duke that was intended to bring together researchers from across the social science and data science disciplines to learn and discuss topics in computational social science (CSS). Each day, the organizers Chris Bail and Matt Salganik taught mini-lectures on different CSS topics, we split into groups to work on activities together, and a speaker came in to present their research.

With so much diverse data to dig into, the future of quantitative social science is exciting, particularly for those studying the granularities of individual-level behavior. In doing so, we must make sure that this research is ethical, robust and ultimately useful

The Economic and Social Research Center hosted the biennial Research Methods Festival at the University of Bath last week.

To learn more about the potential for VR to transform data visualization, Katie Metzler worked with SAGE colleagues, Diana Aleman and Andrew Boney and the team at Datavized, a startup based in New York City, on a project to turn data from one of SAGE’s data products, SAGE Stats, into a 3D VR experience.

Open Review: better books higher sales, and increased access to knowledge

Nesta confirmed they are to launch a new Centre for Collective Intelligence Design this summer. The centre will seek to harness the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) with a particular focus on the combination of human and machine intelligence.

The first-ever “Social Science FOO Camp” was held a couple of weeks ago at the headquarters of Facebook in Menlo Park, California

The first ever Social Science Foo Camp took place earlier this month, co-hosted by SAGE, O’Reilly Media and Facebook.

"Alex 'Sandy' Petland tells interviewer Dave Edmonds about the origins of social physics in the days before widespread good data and solid statistical methods and explains how it blossomed as both a field and for Pentland’s own research. Full interview on Social Science Space"

In this Social Science Bite, Professor Gary King, uses text analysis as an example of this big data analysis... King, spotlights the difference between computer scientists’ goals and social scientists’ goals, then talks about work examining social media and censorship in China.