How to find suitable PhD programs in Computational Social Science? I recently graduated from a master's program in Information Science in the U.S. and want to get into a Ph.D. program in the near future. I am pretty interested in computational social science, specifically, I love doing research about social media and understand online communities and social behaviors.
I'm wondering how to find some suitable Computational Social Science programs I can possible get into. I looked up some network science and social dynamics labs. They are pretty cool. But my concern is a lot of hubs of CSS are in CS/EE departments and the competitions are way much bigger than i-schools (where I finished my degree), and I do not very interested in getting too technical or engineering. A good blend of social focus and DS would be ideal for me.
Any suggestions on how I can make the best of the school searching in this specific filed and how to find some inner information are appreciated. Thanks in advance.
There are several/many programs in Communication (which may sometimes refer to itself as Mass Communication and some related terms) that would be good places to study social media, online behavior, etc. using computational methods. Just going off the top of my head, I'd look at the PhD programs at University of North Carolina, University of California at Santa Barbara, Ohio State, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Northeastern University. I also know that Northeastern has an interdisciplinary network science program.
Basically every Communication program that I know of is actively trying to enhance their capacities in this area and would probably be attracted to prospective students with such interests as well. You should also know that competition for faculty jobs in this field is also much less fierce than in most other fields that I know about (there are typically more open positions than new PhDs in a given year). Of course, COVID-19 will cause a hopefully temporary downturn in available jobs in all fields.