A Statistical Physics Approach to Social Systems in the Age of Digital Data

by Andrea Baronchelli (London University)

Thursday 2 Mar 2017, 16:00 → 18:00 Europe/Rome

Aula Conversi (Dipartimento di Fisica - Ed. G.Marconi)

The paradigm of complexity, summarised by the motto “more is different”, is not new. Yet it is the data explosion that we witness today, fuelled by the Internet and cheap sensors, that is allowing us to observe the actual behaviour of many complex social systems for the first time. As a result, many collective phenomena that used to be addressed qualitatively are now calling for a quantitative comprehension, and Statistical Physics and Network Science have taken up the challenge. In this talk, I will show how the study of ordering dynamics and diffusion can be extended from Statistical Physics to problems in Social and Cognitive Sciences, resolving long-standing issues and opening new research directions both in those disciplines and within Physics itself. I will present examples ranging from the emergence of social consensus to the dynamics of human exploration of physical and non-physical (i.e., mental) spaces.