RCN: Social Observatories Coordinating Network (SOCN)

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports the operations of the Social Observatories Coordinating Network (SOCN), a research coordination network that will work with a broad cross-section of scholars in the social, behavioral, and economic (SBE) scientific communities in the development and planning of a set of observatories that will transform SBE science. The major objectives of the network are to continue exploration of ideas regarding the potential form and functioning of a network of social observatories and to actively engage individuals and groups across the SBE research community in this process. SOCN will work with disciplinary and interdisciplinary groups to ensure that they contribute to the design of these proposed observatories and that the scientific questions the observatories might pursue will have value for basic research and for a broad range of practical uses. SOCN will widely dissemination reports and other findings, and it will facilitate interactions among scholars, particularly at national professional meetings and other scientific conferences. The network will facilitate the consideration and development of what is expected to be a transformative set of observatories that would provide a new platform for data collection, data archiving, and data distribution; advanced cyberinfrastructure for a truly interdisciplinary SBE scientific enterprise; new approaches to training of students; and a focal point for synthesis and faculty collaboration around questions of national importance. A coordinated suite of social observatories is expected to add new capabilities for SBE sciences by moving to fine-grained and place-based studies that address local, regional, and national concerns. The observatories will advance understanding of individual decision making via experiments, ethnography, spatially explicit data, administrative, and social media data that, when combined over all sites, will be nationally representative. Through its efforts to facilitate consideration of social observatories, SOCN will advance the discussion of critical new ideas and advance interdisciplinary communication and collaboration across the SBE sciences.