Doctoral Dissertation Research: Impact of Agent-Based Computational Modeling on the Sociological Imagination in an Emerging Academic Field

本论文在科学与社会计划的支持下，以计算社会科学为重点，研究科学中的文化发展。在这个新兴的国际社会中，科学家和工程师将尖端计算技术的发展视为一种设想和催化社会科学变革的方式。本研究通过仔细研究如何在社区中建立有关该技术的实践、本地设置、叙述和意义，遵循基于代理的计算建模和仿真的构建。该项目将包括收集社区的社会网络和人种学数据，并进行基于代理的建模。社交网络数据将从过去15年社区会议出席的证据、会议论文的合作、发表的手稿、建模项目、在线论坛的参与，以及个人与研究中心、实验室、部门和学校的联系中收集。民族志工作的目的是了解形成知识生产的地方设置的组织力量。计算建模界的文献和论述也将被回顾和评估。最后，将评估基于代理的建模平台和模型，以了解这些工件如何指导思维和结构工作实践。这项研究的主要智力贡献是更好地理解科学家和工程师如何组织社区来设计计算技术以满足社会和道德目标。这项工作的第二个贡献是，当科学家和工程师成为研究的焦点时，它将进一步发展合作人种学的概念。这种合作的人种学和社会网络分析的结果可能为计算建模研究社区的成员提供一个机会，以反思他们领域的发展。这项研究的一个潜在的更广泛的影响是使计算社会科学领域对更广泛的受众更有意义和更透明。

This dissertation research, supported by the Science and Society Program, investigates cultural development in science by focusing on computational social sciences. Scientists and engineers in this emerging international community view their development of cutting-edge computational technologies as a way to envision and catalyze change in the social sciences. This research follows the construction of agent-based computational modeling and simulation, by looking closely at how practices, local settings, narratives, and meanings about the technology are established in the community.The project will include the collection of social network and ethnographic data on the community engaging in agent-based modeling. Social network data are to be gathered from evidence of conference attendance in the community over the last fifteen years, collaboration on conference papers, published manuscripts, modeling projects, participation in online forums, and through individuals' affiliations with research centers, labs, departments, and schools. The ethnographic work is directed at understanding the organizing forces that shape local settings of knowledge production. The literature and discourse of the computational modeling community will also be reviewed and assessed. Finally, agent-based modeling platforms and models are to be evaluated for how these artifacts guide thinking and structure work practice.The main intellectual contribution of this research is to better understand how scientists and engineers organize communities to design computational technology to meet social and moral objectives. A second contribution that this work will make is in further developing the notion of collaborative ethnography when scientists and engineers are at the focus of a study. This collaborative ethnography and the results of the social network analysis may provide an opportunity for members of the computational modeling research community to reflect upon the growth of their field. A potential broader impact of this research is in making the field of computational social science meaningful and more transparent to a wider audience.