[W]eak ties … are here seen as indispensable to individuals’ opportunities and to their integration into communities; strong ties, breeding local cohesion, lead to overall fragmentation.

M. Granovetter (1973)

Who are we?

CS2-DataLab is an interdisciplinary laboratory where professors, researchers and MA/MSc/PhD students coming from different disciplines and diverse methodological background tackle similar social problems through the use of computational methods and a complex systems perspective. CS2 is conceived as an open research facility, which is aimed to promote computational social research and doctoral training, but also transference activities. Research interests:

Social determinants of health
Social sustainable development (environment, society and territory)
Information Retrieval
Complex social systems and the emergence of collective phenomena
Computational methods and decision support tool for policy planning
Efficacy and efficiency in health and social service provision
Communication, internet, and social networks
Digital humanities (digital culture and society)

Projects

MISS

Methodological Innovations in Social Sciences

People

Principal Investigator

Javier Alvarez-Galvez

Senior Research Fellow (Ramon & Cajal)

Researchers

Alvaro Suárez-Vergne

PhD Student

Begoña Ramos-Fiol

PhD Student

Blanca Lozano-Chacon

Graduate Student

Esther Ortega-Martin

PhD Student

Jesús Carretero-Bravo

PhD Student

Maria Rojas Ariza

BSc Student

Maribel Serrano-Macias

Research Associate (Postdoc)

Paz Bononato-Fernandez

PhD Student

Victor Suarez-Lledo

PhD Student

Featured Publications

Javier Alvarez-Galvez, Victor Suarez-Lledo

January 2021 In JMIR 2021;23(1):e17187

Prevalence of Health Misinformation on Social Media: Systematic Review

The prevalence of health misinformation was the highest on Twitter and on issues related to smoking products and drugs. However, misinformation on major public health issues, such as vaccines and diseases, was also high. Our study offers a comprehensive characterization of the dominant health misinformation topics and a comprehensive description of their prevalence on different social media platforms, which can guide future studies and help in the development of evidence-based digital policy action plans.

PDF Project DOI

Yelena Mejova, Victor Suarez-Lledo

November 2020 In Social Informatics. SocInfo 2020.

Impact of Online Health Awareness Campaign: Case of National Eating Disorders Association

We find that, despite popular influencers being involved in the campaign, it is governmental and nonprofit accounts that attract the most retweets. Furthermore, examining the tweeting language of users engaged with this content, we find linguistic categories concerning women, family, and anxiety to be mentioned more within the 15 days after the intervention, and categories concerning affiliation, references to others, and positive emotion mentioned less. We conclude with actionable implications for future campaigns and discussion of the method’s limitations.

PDF Project DOI