Summary: From smart phones to social media, digital technology has changed the way we live —allowing for new explorations of human behavior. Big data now enables scientists to process data about human behavior on a scale never before imaginable. In this episode, Professors Julian Zelizer and Sam Wang interview Matt Salganik, a professor of sociology at Princeton University. Salgnik’s new book, “Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age,” explores these concepts, detailing how the digital revolution is transforming how social scientists observe behavior, ask questions, run experiments and engage in mass collaborations. Salganik is also affiliated with the Center for Information Technology Policy and the Center for Statistics and Machine Learning at Princeton University. His research has been funded by Microsoft, Facebook, and Google, and has been featured on NPR and in such publications as the New Yorker, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
