Why computing belongs within the social sciences

Abstract

Fully appreciating the overarching scope of CS requires weaving more than ethics into the reigning curricula. BY RANDY CONNOLLY key insights ˽ The social ills of computing will not go away simply by integrating more ethics instruction or codes of conduct into computing curricula.

Adapting Data-Driven Research to the Fields of Social Sciences and the Humanities

“…Recent literature has raised serious concerns about the effectiveness of computer scientists that apply methods from their field to other disciplines without a proper understanding of the necessary research background within the target domain [1,4]. This article addresses these concerns by suggesting a strong collaborative adaptation process that has been developed within a number of research projects and that aids interdisciplinary research groups in building a common understanding of (i) the research framework within the target discipline and (ii) the benefits that data-driven research methods could yield.…”

“…A common theme of the work presented above is the expansion of data-driven approaches to other research fields, particularly to social sciences. As outlined in the introduction, such approaches have been highly successful, but have also raised concerns regarding their efficiency and legitimacy in terms of impact on the target domain [1,4]. The presented paper aims at addressing these concerns by proposing a collaborative process that promotes a shared understanding of the research framework and an alignment of hypotheses and goals between the disciplines, as outlined in the next section.…”

“…Driven by this success, methods from computer science have expanded to disciplines within the social sciences and humanities, such as business, communication science, economics, healthcare, and even religion. Some researchers have raised concerns about whether the current approach of transferring methods to other fields without considering the target field's theoretical framework, research background, and concepts is really a good strategy for unfolding the full potential of data-driven research approaches [1]. In fact, there are areas within the field of natural language processing that have been doing particularly well, by building upon existing frameworks from other disciplines.…”

“…Bartlett et al [4] note that it is telling that computer scientists are rarely called to embrace traditional sociological thought, and they contest the idea that computer scientists should be legitimate interpreters of social phenomena, even if they have been analyzed with data-driven methods. Researchers such as Connolly argue that computer scientists should receive a more comprehensive training in social sciences [1] to make them better suited for contributing to these fields. Given the wide area of academic disciplines that are considered as social sciences, such a strategy seems challenging and barely actionable in the short term.…”

Ética da Pesquisa em Sistemas de Informação: Por que e como submeter meu projeto ao Comitê de Ética?

“…A área de pesquisa em Computação tem sido cada vez mais desafiada a construir soluções com impacto econômico, social e individual, em empresas, instituições e sociedade. Artigo recentemente publicado na Communications of ACM [Connolly, 2020], um dos periódicos mais representativos da área, discute até a visão de que a Computação seja, cada vez mais, uma área das Ciências Sociais. Também muito recentemente, a SBC publica uma série de livros denominados "Computação e Sociedade", com foco em temáticas multidisciplinares.…”