The New Frontiers of Social Simulation in the Data Science Era: An Introduction to the Proceedings

This chapter introduces the proceedings of the Social Simulation Conference 2022 by providing a brief overview of the impact of social simulation in various research areas. By focusing on the key role of agent-based modeling, we argue that social simulation has a unique position in the wider data science area. This is because it can enrich the predominantly inductive, data-driven, pattern oriented approach of computational social science with deductive, hypothesis-driven, explanatory, mechanism-detection models. Furthermore, social simulation can also work in areas and for contexts where data is not available, experiments cannot be performed or in which scenario exploration is paramount. We would also like to focus on areas and aspects where methodological improvement and cross-methodological integration are required to enhance the potential of social simulation in various communities. In the final section, we introduce the structure and sections of the proceedings.