Studying corruption presents unique challenges. Recent work in the spirit of computational social science exploits newly available data and methods to give a fresh perspective on this important topic. In this chapter we highlight some of these works, describing how they provide insights into classic social scientific questions about the structure and dynamics of corruption in society from micro to macro scales. We argue that corruption is fruitfully understood as a collective action problem that happens between embedded people and organizations. Computational methods like network science and agent-based modeling can give insights into such situations. We also present various (big) data sources that have been exploited to study corruption. We conclude by highlighting work in adjacent fields, for instance on the problems of collusion, tax evasion, organized crime, and the darkweb, and promising avenues for future work.
Corruption is a social plague: gains accrue to small groups, while its costs are borne by everyone. Significant variation in its level between and within countries suggests a relationship between social structure and the prevalence of corruption, yet, large scale empirical studies thereof have been missing due to lack of data. In this paper we relate the structural characteristics of social capital of towns with corruption in their local governments. Using datasets from Hungary, we quantify corruption risk by suppressed competition and lack of transparency in the town's awarded public contract…
Often, corruption is described as taking place within or supported by a network: A collection of individuals structured in such a way as to enable the transaction of bribes for favors. Surprisingly, despite the network nomenclature, corruption is rarely analyzed from the network perspective using the tools of network science. Here, we will argue that analyzing corruption from the perspective of network science is beneficial to its understanding. In passing this chapter, a contribution to the Liber Amicorum in honor of Leo Huberts, then gives a very short introduction into social network analys…
Sustainability & Social Segmentation in Social Media Contagion: A Mathematical and Computational Study on Dual Effects of Individual Needs & Peer Influence
Peter Blau(Exchange and Power in Social Life,Wiley and Sons,1964)强调了社会群体融合的矛盾方面。在整合过程中,群体成员在争夺社会地位的同时,也扮演着受众的角色。在这里,我们表明,当竞争战胜了认可的愿望,一个急剧的转变打破了所有的友好关系。然而,正如布劳所描述的那样,地位高的人倾向于更多地接受他人;这是通过赞扬他人和揭示自己的弱点来实现的。在我们的模型中,这一行动平滑了过渡,改善了人际关系。
Quantitative social science is not only about regression analysis or, in general, data inference. Computer simulations of social mechanisms have a 60-year long history. They have been used for many different purposes -- to test scenarios, test the consistency of descriptive theories (proof-of-concept models), explore emergent phenomena, forecast, etc. In this essay, we sketch these historical developments, the role of mechanistic models in the social sciences, and the influences from the natural and formal sciences. We argue that mechanistic computational models form a common ground for social…
With the increasing abundance of 'digital footprints' left by human interactions in online environments, e.g., social media and app use, the ability to model complex human behavior has become increasingly possible. Many approaches have been proposed, however, most previous model frameworks are fairly restrictive. We introduce a new social modeling approach that enables the creation of models directly from data with minimal a priori restrictions on the model class. In particular, we infer the minimally complex, maximally predictive representation of an individual's behavior when viewed in isola…
University of Warwick(华威大学);The Chinese University of Hong Kong(香港中文大学);University of Birmingham(伯明翰大学)
COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11th, 2020. With half of the world's countries in lockdown as of April due to this pandemic, monitoring and understanding the spread of the virus and infection rates and how these factors relate to behavioural and societal parameters is crucial for effective policy making. This paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of masks, social distancing, lockdown and self-isolation for reducing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 infections. Our findings based on agent-based simulation modelling show that whilst requiring a lockd…