Joe Bak-Coleman

Manoel Horta Ribeiro (@manoelhortaribeiro.bsky.social)

Assistant Professor @ Princeton Previously: EPFL 🇨🇭, UFMG 🇧🇷 Interests: Computational Social Science, Platforms, GenAI, Moderation

(PDF) Algorithmically Mediating Communication to Enhance Collective Decision-Making in Online Social Networks

PDF | Many collective decision-making contexts involve communication among group members. Sometimes this communication helps the collective reach an... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

Reality Blind - Vol. 1

Integrating the Systems Science Underpinning Our Collective Futures

Stewardship of global collective behavior

Collective behavior provides a framework for understanding how the actions and properties of groups emerge from the way individuals generate and share information. In humans, information flows were initially shaped by natural selection yet are increasingly structured by emerging communication technologies. Our larger, more complex social networks now transfer high-fidelity information over vast distances at low cost. The digital age and the rise of social media have accelerated changes to our social systems, with poorly understood functional consequences. This gap in our knowledge represents a principal challenge to scientific progress, democracy, and actions to address global crises. We argue that the study of collective behavior must rise to a “crisis discipline” just as medicine, conservation, and climate science have, with a focus on providing actionable insight to policymakers and regulators for the stewardship of social systems.

zach lieberman on Twitter / X

Today I was able to weave a line from Myron Krueger in a talk I gave : Computation is the medium of our lifetimes - it’s not just a technical medium but a cultural medium as well. We should explore the culture of computation.— zach lieberman (@zachlieberman) April 10, 2024

Collective action strategies in the age of AI w/ Nick Vincent from Data Leverage - The Blockchain Socialist

I spoke to Nick Vincent, assistant professor of computing science at Simon Fraser University and author of the Data Leverage substack, about what it actually means that AI systems are built on the collective output of humanity’s digital labor and what we can do about it. Nick has spent years researching how data functions as a bargaining tool, […]

Governing Together: Toward Infrastructure for Community-Run Social Media | Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Collaborative and social computing theory, concepts and paradigms

Common Fabric

A social computing lab. We are building a medium for software that revolves around people, not apps.

Human social sensing is an untapped resource for computational social science

The ability to ‘sense’ the social environment and thereby to understand the thoughts and actions of others allows humans to fit into their social worlds, communicate and cooperate, and learn from others’ experiences. Here we argue that, through the lens of computational social science, this ability can be used to advance research into human sociality. When strategically selected to represent a specific population of interest, human social sensors can help to describe and predict societal trends. In addition, their reports of how they experience their social worlds can help to build models of social dynamics that are constrained by the empirical reality of human social systems.

How Online Mobs Act Like Flocks Of Birds

A growing body of research suggests human behavior on social media is strikingly similar to collective behavior in nature.

How Online Mobs Act Like Flocks Of Birds

A growing body of research suggests human behavior on social media is strikingly similar to collective behavior in nature.

Role differentiation as ignition of a collective information...

Informational active matter shows how measurement-informed decisions produce collective order, so far in systems that reach consensus. We design collective information engines structured by...

Thoughts on Cyberpositionality: The Construction of Digital Communities in Digital Spaces, Damien Patrick Williams

I found Rebecca Monteleone, Martin Perez Comisso, and Elma Hajric’s “Cyberpositionality: Sociotechnical Location in the Digital Age” (2024) to be an extremely timely and important article which can…

Field Theory: AI as Social Science Question, Object & Tool

Uses of advanced artificial intelligence are changing how societies organize labor, govern, produce knowledge, and make meaning. In light of these developments, this essay argues that AI models, tools, and systems pose three interrelated imperatives for social science: they demand renewed attention to social theories of how technology, human experience, and social order are entangled; they require study as objects of inquiry in their own right; and they offer capabilities that may transform—or upend—the practice of social investigation itself. From Weber’s analysis of rationalization to Du Bois’s study of technology and inequality to contemporary scholarship on algorithmic governance, the essay examines what social science distinctively offers: the capacity to historicize the apparently unprecedented, to trace connections across scales, and to center those most affected by technological change. It identifies how algorithmic systems are remaking the distribution of opportunity and risk as a central task of social inquiry and asks what futures social science might help bring into being.

The Digital Life Collective

The Digital Life Collective is an enabler. If you think we should be doing something we're not currently doing, we're here to help you and your project make the change you want to see in the world.