The Chinese Journal of Sociology (CJS) is a peer-reviewed international journal of Shanghai University and the Paul and Marcia Wythes Center on Contemporary China at Princeton University, with the aim of building an academic platform for in-depth discussion of the issues facing contemporary Chinese society from a sociological perspective. We invite submissions for specially-themed issue of CJS, which we plan to publish in 2023 spring.

The past decade witnessed the increasing availability of large-scale data that capture human activities and social behaviors, in form of digitized traditional sources such as interactive online surveys and administrative records, and newly emerging sources such as social media and mobility trackers. Leveraging the big data with modern computational methods equips social scientists with quantitative insights to uncover hidden patterns and enhanced understanding of various social phenomena, which inspires this special issue to report and spread edge cutting studies on “Big Data in Sociology”.

We welcome innovative research studies that bring big data and quantitative methods to address sociological questions with theoretical and empirical insights, especially in Chinese societies. Our interests include but are not limited to the following topics:

Leveraging while protecting mobility footprints

Understanding human behaviors with images and videos

Predicting poverty and stratification

Connecting network science and human dynamics

Explaining attitude and opinion polarization

Identifying and preventing fake news

Encouraging collaborations in social contexts

Editorial Board of Special Issue

Advisory: Yu Xie, Princeton University

Guest editors: Tianji Cai, University of Macau

        Junming Huang, Princeton University

Key Dates

Proposal deadline: April 15, 2022

Proposal decision: April 30, 2022

Full paper deadline: August 15, 2022

Full paper decision: September 1, 2022

Final camera-ready: January 15, 2023

Publication (estimated): April 2023

If you are interested in contributing, please email a proposal to [cjs-specialissue@outlook.com]with the subject [Big Data in Sociology proposal] by April 15, 2022. The proposal should briefly describe your research question, motivation and preparation, and (if any) preliminary exploration. We will review all proposals and invite selected authors to prepare a full paper, which is expected to be submitted to the CJS submission portal (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cjsocio) for peer review by August 15, 2022. Selected studies will be published as a special issue “Big Data in Sociology” in Chinese Journal of Sociology in 2023 spring.

We would greatly appreciate it if you help spread this call as widely as possible and consider contributing. For more information, please visit https://journals.sagepub.com/home/chs.