a trip to flatland: mapping or modeling in the social sciences

A trip to Flatland

oron mapping and modeling in social sciences

Tommaso Venturini

Flatland, Edwin Abbott Abbott, 1884

PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)

PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)

PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)

PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)

PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)

PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)

PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)

PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)

PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)

PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)

PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)

PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)

PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)

PezzinoLeo Lionni (1975)

1 Level Stand-Point

Latour, B., Jensen, P., Venturini, T. et al.‘The Whole is Always Smaller Than Its Parts’ A Digital Test of Gabriel Tarde’s Monads.British Journal of Sociology 63(4)

The emergent society Thomas Hobbes, 1651The Leviathan

Sui generis social facts

The collective self is not a simple epiphenomenon of its morphologic base, precisely as the individual self is not a simple efflorescence of the nervous system.

For the collective self to appear, a sui generis synthesis of individual self has to be produced. This synthesis creates a world of feelings, ideas, images that, once come to life, follow their own laws.

Emile Durkheim, 1912Le formes élémentaires

de la vie religieuse

Sui generis social facts?

Emile Durkheim VS Gabriel Tarde

Against emergence

Let us suppose for a moment that one of our human States, composed not of a few thousand but of a few quadrillions or quintillions of men, hermetically sealed and inaccessible as individuals (like China, but infinitely more populous still, and more closed) was known to us only by the data of its statisticians, whose figures, made up of very large numbers, recurred with extreme regularity.

When a political or social revolution, which would be revealed to us by an abrupt enlargement or diminution of some of these numbers, took place in this State, we might well be certain that we would be observing a fact caused by individual ideas and passions, but we would resist the temptation to become lost in superfluous conjectures on the nature of these impenetrable causes even though they alone were the real ones, and the wisest option would appear to us to explain as best we could the unusual numbers by ingenious comparisons with clever manipulations of the normal numbers.

Tarde, 1893Monadologie et sociologie

Follow the White Rabbitwhy controversy mapping (and digital methods)

will change everything you know about sociology

Tommaso Venturini

tommaso.venturini@sciences-po.fr

The methodological strabismusof social sciences

Photo credit – tarout_sun via Flickr - ©

The quali/quantitative divide

rich data, small populationsqualitative methods (telephoto)

quantitative methods (wide angle)large populations, poor data

The Gulliver complex of social sciences

Gulliver's TravelsJonathan Swift, 1726

Sui generis social facts?

Emile Durkheim VS Gabriel Tarde

Sui generis social facts!

Emile Durkheim VS Gabriel Tarde

Simulating the emergenceof macro from micro Theraulaz & Bonabeau (1999)

A brief history of stigmergyArtificial Life, 5, 97–116

Thomas C. Schelling , 1969 Models of Segregation

Simulate how global-macro-social structures emerge from local-micro-individual interactions

Simulating the emergenceof macro from micro

Thomas C. Schelling , 1969 Models of Segregation

Simulate how global-macro-social structures emerge from local-micro-individual interactions

While ignoring the work done by mayors, municipalities, civic associations, planning acts, public utilities, urban mafias…

Simulating the emergenceof macro from micro

The media as an object of study

Photo credit – Brandon Doran via Flickr - ©

The media as carbon paper

Chris Harrison, 2004Internet connections

From digitaltraceability…

Virtual Society thus, is not a thing of the future,

it’s the materialisation, the traceability of

society. It renders visible because of the

obsessive necessity of materialising information

into cables, into data.

Latour, B. 1998“Thought Experiments in Social Science:

from the Social Contract to Virtual Society”

… to digitalmethods

The Internet is employed as a site of research for

far more than just online culture.

The issue no longer is how much of society and

culture is online, but rather how to diagnose

cultural change and societal conditions with the

Internet.

The conceptual point of departure for the

research program is the recognition that the

Internet is not only an object of study, but also a

source.

Rogers, R. 2009The End of the Virtual: Digital Methods.

Amsterdam University Press.

Digital methodsand large populations

Paul Butler, 2010Visualizing Friendships

Digital methodsand rich data

AOL user 711391 search historywww.minimovies.org/documentaires/view/ilovealaska

Large populationsand rich data

Google Fluwww.google.org/flutrends

Large populationsand rich data

Google Fluwww.google.org/flutrends

Large populationsand rich data

Google Fluwww.google.org/flutrends

Zooming in and out Top 50 US blogsBen Fry, 2006

http://nymag.com/news/media/15972/

Datascapes navigationhttp://pulseweb.cortext.net/tubes/

Alice sociology Alice's Adventures in WonderlandLewis Carroll, 1865

Galam S., Public debates driven by incomplete scientific data: The cases of evolution theory, global warming and H1N1 pandemic influenza Physica A 389(17)

« Using a one-person-one-argument principle, the model implements an opinion shift via small group discussions monitored by local majority rules » (p. 12)

From simulating…

… to mappinghttp://computationallegalstudies.com/2009/11/27/visualizing-the-east-anglia-climate-research-unit-leaked-email-network/

médialab quali-quantitative methods

The monads

Each element, hitherto conceived as a point, now becomes an indefinitely enlarged sphere of action… and all these interpenetrating spheres are so many domains proper to each element, so many distinct though intermixed spaces, perhaps, which we wrongly take to be a single unique space. The centre of each sphere is a point, which is uniquely defined by its properties, but in the end a point like any other; and besides, since activity is the very essence of the elements, each of them exists in its entirety in the place where it acts (pp. 26-27).

Tarde, 1893Monadologie et sociologie

Where are the structures?Where is the langage?

Where are the structures?Where is the langage?

Red : referencesBlue : institutionsGreen : keywords

1. Structures and individualacts on the same level

REFERENCE

Turing AM, 1952, Phil. Trans. of

the Royal Society of Bio. Sciences

INSTITUTION(specialized)

Blackett Lab. ImperialCollege

KEYWORD

Magnetic properties

INSTITUTION(non-specialized)

Ecole Polytechnique de

Zurich

2. The difference between parts and wholes is just a question of zoom

What I did not say(caveats)

I did not say…

• that collective existence and Google are the

same- consider all digital traces not just the easiest

- keep doing qualitative research

• that we can get rid of theory- more data means more cleaning (information/noise)

- data are never just data (whose data is my data?)

• that individual and collective actors are the same

Emergence as magic(models as simulation)

Emergence as origami(models as maps)

tommasoventurini.it

To read more about thisLatour, B., Jensen, P., Venturini, T., Grauwin, S., & Boullier, D.

‘The Whole is Always Smaller Than Its Parts’ A Digital Test of Gabriel Tarde’s Monads.

British Journal of Sociology 63(4)