Research

Today billions of people connect with each other and with the world around them through social media. This presents an unprecedented opportunity to advance social science research. This new opportunity also presents a challenge to develop novel tools and techniques with which to tackle the scale and complexity of phenomena which can be observed online.

Facebook is pleased to invite the academic community to respond to a call for research proposals on computational social science methodology. Research awardees will be expected to contribute novel approaches in this space, including but not limited to:

• Network analysis of social systems
• Computational methods to understand information diffusion and conversation
• Computational methods to map and study cultural patterns and dynamics
• Causal inference in social systems
• Measurement of network effects
• Computational approaches to understanding organizations, groups and communities
• Unsupervised approaches to understanding social networks and social phenomena
• Statistical models of network evolution
• Novel techniques for visualization of social network data
• Data privacy in social network data
• Bias and fairness in applications based on social signals
• Social network approaches to information integrity
• Computational models for social networks

This research should propose novel methodology whose application has the potential to unlock novel insights in the social sciences. No Facebook data will be provided to award recipients, and the proposed research need not be about Facebook.

Up to three $50,000 USD gifts will be awarded.