Synonyms for "computational social science"

The other day, a friend asked me how to find other "computational social scientists."  Good question.  I wish I had a good answer -- I might be less bored at conferences.

The big data movement is pulling people together from many different backgrounds, and they're still working out a common language to explain what they do.  If I had to guess, either "data science" or "big data" is going to be the label that sticks, but I'm sure there will be plenty of offshoots, like "computational social science."


To get some new ideas, I took a few of my favorite near-synonyms and ran them through google's keyword tool for adwords.  Then I branched out and searched a little by hand.  Low-tech, but it works.  Here are some of the terms that popped to the top.

• computational social science
• data scientist
• analytics
• data mining
• business intelligence
• visualization
• big data
• knowledge discovery
• text mining
• network analysis
• social media analytics
• social network mining
• predictive analytics
• social analytics
• business analytics
• ecommerce analytics
• machine learning
• statistical programming
• predictive modeling

I also found a bunch of articles hyping the emergence of a new data-oriented field.  This stuff makes me feel good about job prospects, so I'll pass a couple along here:

What is Data Science?
Jobs For Data Scientists Explode across the Market