Social computing concerns the study of social behavior and context based on computational systems. Behavioral modeling reproduces the social behavior, and allows for experimenting with and deep understanding of behavior, patterns, and potential outcomes. The pervasive use of computer and Internet technologies provides an unprecedented environment where people can share opinions and experiences, offer suggestions and advice, debate, and even conduct experiments. Social computing facilitates behavioral modeling in model building, analysis, pattern mining, anticipation, and prediction. The proceedings from this interdisciplinary workshop provide a platform for researchers, practitioners, and graduate students from sociology, behavioral and computer science, psychology, cultural study, information systems, and operations research to share results and develop new concepts and methodologies aimed at advancing and deepening our understanding of social and behavioral computing to aid critical decision making.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling and Prediction, held in College Park, MD, USA, March 29-31, 2011. The 48 papers and 3 keynotes presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 88 submissions. The papers cover a wide range of topics including social network analysis; modeling; machine learning and data mining; social behaviors; public health; cultural aspects; and effects and search.

Social computing concerns the study of social behavior and context based on computational systems. Behavioral modeling reproduces the social behavior, and allows for experimenting with and deep understanding of behavior, patterns, and potential outcomes. The pervasive use of computer and Internet technologies provides an unprecedented environment where people can share opinions and experiences, offer suggestions and advice, debate, and even conduct experiments. Social computing facilitates behavioral modeling in model building, analysis, pattern mining, anticipation, and prediction. The proceedings from this interdisciplinary workshop provide a platform for researchers, practitioners, and graduate students from sociology, behavioral and computer science, psychology, cultural study, information systems, and operations research to share results and develop new concepts and methodologies aimed at advancing and deepening our understanding of social and behavioral computing to aid critical decision making.

Social computing is concerned with the study of social behavior and social context based on computational systems. Behavioral modeling provides a representation of the social behavior, and allows for experimenting, scenario planning, and deep und- standing of behavior, patterns, and potential outcomes. The pervasive use of computer and Internet technologies by humans in everyday life provides an unprecedented en- ronment of various social activities that, due to the platforms under which they take place, generate large amounts of stored data as a by-product, often in systematically organized form. Social computing facilitates behavioral modeling in model building, analysis, pattern mining, and prediction. Numerous interdisciplinary and interdepe- ent systems are created and used to represent the various social and physical systems for investigating the interactions between groups, communities, or nation-states. This requires joint efforts to take advantage of the state-of-the-art research from multiple disciplines improving social computing and behavioral modeling in order to document lessons learned and develop novel theories, experiments, and methodologies to better explain the interaction between social (both informal and institutionalized), psyc- logical, and physical mechanisms. The goal is to enable us to experiment, create, and recreate an operational environment with a better understanding of the contributions from each individual discipline, forging joint interdisciplinary efforts. This volume comprises the proceedings of the third international workshop on - cial Computing, Behavioral Modeling and Prediction, which has grown trem- dously.