What is Computational social science?

Computational social science is the academic sub-discipline concerned with computational approaches to the social sciences. This means that computers are used to model, simulate, and analyze social phenomena. While large scale computational methods have been applied to natural sciences for decades, interest in applying data science to social sciences has grown significantly in the last decade. Fields include computational economics, computational sociology, cliodynamics, culturomics, and the automated analysis of contents, in social and traditional media. It focuses on investigating social and behavioral relationships and interactions through social simulation, modeling, network analysis, and media analysis.