Dear colleagues,
The 4th edition of the DACH-CSS Conference will take place at GESIS in Cologne, Germany, on 22-23 April 2027. As every year, we invite scholars from wherever they may be to join us for two days full of great talks, posters, and to connect with other computational social science scholars.
The topic this year: Advances in Data Collection and Access for Computational Social Science
- Shifting data access: Platform APIs and scraping of digital behavioral data are increasingly restricted, as platforms have strong incentives to limit public access. - Challenges for traditional methods: Established social science data collection faces declining survey participation, selective participation and non-response, hard-to-reach populations, the spread of non-probability sampling, rising costs, and declining public trust in academic research. - New methodological approaches: Large language models enable synthetic data generation and augmentation. Agentic approaches allow for automated web scraping and data collection from public websites. User-centered approaches such as data donations and dedicated smartphone apps offer more detailed digital behavioral data. - Regulatory developments: Frameworks like the Digital Services Act (DSA) open new routes for researchers to access platform data and may counter the concentration of data among a few powerful actors.
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
We invite early career researchers to submit and present their CSS-related work to the DACH-CSS Conference to give a short lightning talk and present their work during the poster session. Please submit an abstract of up to 300 words to workshop@computational-social-science.org by December 4th, 2026. We offer a limited number of presentation slots, and submissions will be selected based on the fit with the field of CSS as well as the originality and quality of the work. Acceptance notifications will be sent out in January 2027, shortly before the registration for the conference opens.
As part of the event, we will confer an Early Career Researcher Award (worth 500 EUR, sponsored by Landesanstalt für Medien NRW). All accepted submissions are automatically eligible. In addition to the conference’s core Advances in Data Collection and Access for Computational Social Science, we welcome submissions on topics including, but not limited to:
- Best-practice applications of computational methods/behavioral data to (complex) social science research questions - Work that combines established social science theories with digital data and/or computational methods - Empirical results and research designs from ongoing or completed CSS projects - Theoretical and conceptual challenges in CSS - CSS methodological innovations; including mixed-methods approaches - Data linkage applications and methods for enriching large-scale or online data sources
Check out the website for more information: https://computational-social-science.org/
IMPORTANT DATES - Abstract Submission Deadline: December 4th, 2026 - Acceptance Notifications: Mid January 2027 - Registration opens: End of January 2027
Best wishes, The Organizing Committee