The ELTE-RC2S2 (Research Center for Computational Social Science) research group was established at the Institute of Empirical Studies of the Eötvös Loránd University in 2018 by the expansion of the former Methodological Research Center. The leaders of the research group are Ildikó Barna and Renáta Németh.
Our research team uses methods of data mining and text mining to analyse textual data available on the internet or digitalized offline texts. We also use network analysis and develop data visualization solutions. Our research topics are diverse, we deal with online hate speech, the online representation of corruption and we analyse online forums with the main focus on depression.
The data revolution that has taken place in recent decades and the digital data generated by our everyday activities became a socially relevant source of information. Responding to this, the methodology of quantitative social research uses by now methods of computer science and artificial intelligence research. This new research area is called computational social science in the international literature. Subfields of Computational Social Science are data science (machine learning, text analytics), network analysis and data visualization. The digital revolution not only brought new data sources, but also changed the society. As sociologists, our goal is to get to know this new type of society. We are convinced that the computational trend will be inescapable. The aim of the RC2S2 research group is to discover the social knowledge of this area and to develop and adopt new methods, and explore its epistemological consequences.
