Digital and computational demography

Abstract

Digital and computational demography explores demography in relation to the digital revolutionthe rapid technological improvements in digitized information storage, computational power and the spread of the internet and mobile technologies since the turn of the new millennium. We cover three ways in which the digital revolution touches upon demography. First, we discuss how digital technologies, through their impacts on daily lives and in shifting how individuals access information, communicate and access services, have implications for demographic outcomes linked to health and mortality, fertility and family, and migration. Second, we discuss how the digital revolution has created a wide range of new data sources such as digital trace and geospatial data that can be repurposed for demographic research, and enabled respondent recruitment across the world via the internet and social media. Third, we discuss how improvements in computational power have facilitated the use of computational methods such as microsimulation and agent-based modelling as well as machine learning techniques for demographic applications. We conclude by discussing future opportunities and challenges for digital demography.

A global perspective on the social structure of science

“…Mobility. Here we briefly review the most innovative approaches in inferring mobility from a change in academic affiliation addresses (8,9,34,(59)(60)(61)(62)(63) and highlight their advantages and shortcomings. Some works model mobility similar to a social selection process versus social influence.…”