Guest Editors' Introduction: Social Computing

Broadly stated, social computing takes a computational approach to the study and modeling of social interactions and communications. It also encompasses the development of technologies supporting these interactions. In recent years, we've seen social computing impact numerous information and communications technology (ICT) fields. It's attracted significant interest from not only researchers in the computing and social sciences but also software and online game vendors, Web entrepreneurs, political analysts, and digital-government practitioners, among others. This special issue samples the state of the art social-computing research from several perspectives: the overall paradigm of social-computing research; technological support for social-computing applications; cognitive modeling and architecture of agents and agent societies; and social-computing applications in areas such as terrorist network analysis, competitive business strategies, and agent behavior in financial markets. This article is part of a special issue on social computing.