On February 15, the National Science Centre (NCN) announced results of the twelfth edition of the MAESTRO competition and the tenth edition of the SONATA BIS competition. The awarded grants will enable to carry out pioneering basic research projects and to set up new research teams. We are pleased to inform that one of the grants was awarded to prof. Artur Pokropek, who received 3 983 436 PLN for his project entitled “Social sciences digital laboratory”. The grant will last for 5 years and will be set up at IFiS PAN.
The project aims to develop methods of using digital traces together with more traditional social data sources, e.g. survey data, and thus contribute to the understanding of current social research problems regarding trust, attitudes towards migration, environment protection, governance, as well as false information (fake news), and polarisation of attitudes. In order to develop methods of using digital traces, the proposed research actions entail conducting extensive methodological research that will use five data sources: representative survey data, online digital data, data from a specially designed panel study, experimental research and qualitative data. The project assumes that digital traces analysis will not eliminate the need to directly survey people, but rather it is expected that a correct use of digital data can greatly increase surveys usefulness. Data from classical sources will allow to calibrate digital data and check their key assumptions. Properly analysed digital data, assisted by classical instruments, can help to advance fundamental research in the social sciences. As pointed out by Golder and Macy: over the past century there were no shortages of social theories, but there were serious limitations in data availability (2014, p. 130). The unprecedented possibilities related to Big Data that are collected on the Internet on a mass scale and at the micro level at the same time, change this situation for good.
