Social Simulation for a Digital Society: Introduction

An increasingly popular strand of social science research attempts to understand social facts (e.g. segregation, social inequality, cooperation, opinions, social movements) not merely by relating them to other social facts, but rather by detailing how relatively simple interactions between individuals and groups (agents) combine and lead to the emergence and diffusion of social patterns (Squazzoni 2012; Macy and Willer 2002). Simulation models to investigate such interactions have been around for decades in the social sciences, for example Schelling’s (1978) model of social segregation or Axelrod’s (1986, 1997) model of the evolution of cooperation, but only became more common as the computing power accessible to the typical social scientist increased.