Web Science

Web science is an emerging interdisciplinary field concerned with the study of large-scale socio-technical systems, such as the World Wide Web. It considers the relationship between people and technology, the ways that society and technology co-constitute one another and the impact of this co-constitution on broader society. Web Science combines research from disciplines as diverse as sociology, computer science, economics, and mathematics.

An earlier definition was given by American computer scientist Ben Shneiderman: "Web Science" is the processing the information available on the web in similar terms to those applied to natural environment.

The Web Science Institute describes Web Science as focusing "the analytical power of researchers from disciplines as diverse as mathematics, sociology, economics, psychology, law and computer science to understand and explain the Web. It is necessarily interdisciplinary - as much about social and organizational behaviour as about the underpinning technology."

There are numerous academic research groups engaged in Web Science research, many of which are members of WSTNet, the Web Science Trust Network of research labs. Health Web Science emerged as a sub-discipline of Web Science that studies the role of the Web's impact human health outcomes and how to further utilize the Web to improve health outcomes.

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