Welcome to my homepage. I am professor of sociology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. My chair is part of the Institute of Technology Futures, and focusses on sociology and computational social science. In addition, I am the scientific director of the Methods Lab at KIT's House of Competence. My general research interest concerns collective action and social integration in social networks. I use computational modeling techniques to develop new hypotheses. To test these hypotheses, I have gathered longitudinal network data in several organizations and conducted laboratory experiments. In the past years, my focus has shifted towards process of opinion polarization and the spreading of falsehoods in online communication systems. For instance, I develop computer models of online social networks and study the effects of filter bubbles, and social bots. I test model assumptions and predictions with observational data from the web and field experiments. Before moving to Karlsruhe, I was assistant professor at the Department of Sociology and the ICS at the University of Groningen. Before that, I was senior scientist at ETH Zurich. I taught model building, sociological theory, and research methodology in the undergraduate Sociology program of the University of Leipzig, and the University of Groningen, as well as at ETH Zurich and the KIT.  Principal publications Michael Mäs, and Dirk Helbing (2017, online first) Random deviations improve micro-macro predictions. An empirical test. Sociological Methods and Research. Michael Mäs, and Karl-Dieter Opp (2016) When is ignorance bliss? Disclosing true information and cascades of norm violation in networks. Social Networks. 116-129 Michael Mäs, and Heinrich Nax (2016) A behavioral study of “noise” in coordination games. Journal of Economic Theory. 162. 195-208 Mäs Michael, Andreas Flache, Károly Takács, and Karen Jehn (2013) In the short term we divide, in the long term we unite: Demographic crisscrossing and the effects of faultlines on subgroup polarization. Organization Science 24: 716-736 Mäs Michael, Andreas Flache, and Dirk Helbing (2010) Individualization as Driving Force of Clustering Phenomena in Humans. PLoS Computational Biology 6 |  News
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