Social Science One is an academic organization based at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, co-chaired by Gary King and Ken Benoit. The organization was founded by

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

in 2018 to study models of collaboration between industry and academia. A pilot collaboration with

launched in April 2018 to study the relationship between social media and elections. In 2021, Social Science One established a consortium of

social science Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the ...

research institutes A research institute, research centre, or research organization is an establishment founded for doing research. Research institutes may specialize in basic research or may be oriented to applied research. Although the term often implies natural sc ...

to study and reduce barriers to industry-academic partnership.

History

The Social Science One partnership began in 2018, in the wake of the

Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal In the 2010s, personal data belonging to millions of Facebook users was collected by British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica for Campaign advertising, political advertising without informed consent. The data was collected through an app call ...

. At its launch, Vox reported that

established Social Science One to prevent future events similar to the scandal and also as a

public relations Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. Pu ...

response to that problem. The partnership was announced by King, original co-chair

Nathaniel Persily Nathaniel Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, where he has taught since 2013. He is a scholar of constitutional law, election law, and the democratic process.Elliot Schrage of Facebook. The partnership was supported by a coalition of seven foundations assembled by

Larry Kramer Laurence David Kramer (June 25, 1935May 27, 2020) was an American playwright, author, film producer, public health advocate, and gay rights activist. He began his career rewriting scripts while working for Columbia Pictures, which led him to Lo ...

, including the

Democracy Fund The Democracy Fund is a charitable foundation created by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar Pierre Morad Omidyar (born Parviz Morad Omidyar, June 21, 1967) is a French-born Iranian-American billionaire and the grandson of General Mahmud Mir-Dja ...

, the

Hewlett Foundation The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, commonly known as the Hewlett Foundation, is a private foundation, established by Hewlett-Packard cofounder William Redington Hewlett and his wife Flora Lamson Hewlett in 1966. The Hewlett Foundation awa ...

, the

Knight Foundation The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, also known as the Knight Foundation, is an American non-profit foundation that provides grants for journalism, communities, and the arts. The organization was founded as the Knight Memorial Education ...

, the

Charles Koch Foundation The Koch family foundations are a group of charitable foundations in the United States associated with the family of Fred C. Koch. The most prominent of these are the Charles Koch Foundation and the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation, created ...

and the

Omidyar Network Omidyar Network is a self-styled "philanthropic investment firm," composed of a foundation and an impact investment firm. Established in 2004 by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, Omidyar Network has committed over US$1.5billion to no ...

. Social Science One, Facebook and affiliated academics have frequently discussed the unanticipated difficulty of obtaining the datasets originally planned and the attendant delay in data availability. The datasets required new legal agreements, administrative frameworks, and organizational relationships. In addition, the project required the use of new privacy protections, including

differential privacy Differential privacy (DP) is a mathematically rigorous framework for releasing statistical information about datasets while protecting the privacy of individual data subjects. It enables a data holder to share aggregate patterns of the group while ...

techniques that had yet to be developed. On December 11, 2019, addressing the delayed availability of data the Co-Chairs and European Advisory Committee of Social Science One made a public statement "''The current situation is untenable. Heated public and political discussions are waged over the role and responsibilities of platforms in today’s societies, and yet researchers cannot make fully informed contributions to these discussions. We are mostly left in the dark, lacking appropriate data to assess potential risks and benefits. This is not an acceptable situation for scientific knowledge. It is not an acceptable situation for our societies''".

Data and applications

In 2020, Social Science One and Facebook released a URL Shares dataset. The dataset, about one petabyte in size, containing almost all public URLs shared and clicked by Facebook users globally, and metadata such as Facebook likes,

ideological An ideology is a set of beliefs or values attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely about belief in certain knowledge, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones". Form ...

, and

fact checking A fact is a true datum about one or more aspects of a circumstance. Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scientific facts are verified by repeatable careful observation or measurement by experiments or other means. For e ...

information. Social Science One and the

Social Science Research Council The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) is a US-based, independent, international nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing research in the social sciences and related disciplines. Established in Manhattan in 1923, it maintains a headqua ...

launched and administered a series of requests for proposals for this dataset, which are ongoing. Twelve research projects using this dataset were announced in 2019, focusing on the impact of social media on elections and democracy. Since the release of the URL dataset, Social Science One has expanded its mandate to encompass industry-academic collaboration at large, creating a new consortium of social science research centers to study the topic. In addition, the organization is facilitating a partnership between Harvard University researchers and

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

to develop

algorithms.

Controversy

In August 2019

BuzzFeed BuzzFeed, Inc. is an American Internet mass media, media, news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media. Based in New York City, BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John Seward Johnson III, John S. Johnson III to ...

noted that Social Science One had not fulfilled its commitment to share the data it promised 16 months earlier.

, the

William and Flora Hewlett Foundation The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, commonly known as the Hewlett Foundation, is a private foundation, established by Hewlett-Packard cofounder William Redington Hewlett and his wife Flora Lamson Hewlett in 1966. The Hewlett Foundation a ...

, the

John S. and James L. Knight Foundation John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Second Ep ...

, the

and

gave Facebook deadline to share data and threatened to pull out of the project because of the delay.

References

External links

* {{authority control Facebook Social science research institutes Research institutes in Massachusetts