This volume reflects the state of the art in social data science and comprises a selection of peer-reviewed papers from the 4th International Conference on Data Science and Social Research, DSSR 2024, held in Naples, Italy, March 25–27, 2024. Drawing on statistics and computational methods within data science, it explores the opportunities and challenges that the “data revolution” poses to social research, addressing key areas such as sustainable development, social inequalities, public health, communication, and futures studies. The contributions examine complex social systems and present new social research on human behavior and society, using large datasets gathered from a variety of sources, such as social media and communication systems, or produced through controlled experiments, along with new methodological advancements for extracting social knowledge from large-scale datasets. Methodological, ethical, and digital data quality issues pertaining to social platforms are covered, with a focus on both the study of spatial data as well as sustainability, including sustainable tourism, and integrated systems are examined to take advantage of new sources of social data.
