Conference Program
The ninth annual Politics and Computational Social Science conference and the APSA Preconference in Political Communication are co-located at the Metcalf Trustee Center at Boston University on September 2, 2026.
The 2026 APSA Preconference in Political Communication organizing committee consists of Yingdan Lu (Northwestern University), Ayse D. Lokmanoglu (Boston University), Michael Wagner (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Chris Wells (Boston University).
The Politics and Computational Social Science (PaCSS) Conference 2026 is co-chaired by Justin Gross and Kelsey Shoub (University of Massachusetts-Amherst), with support from Krista Gile (University of Massachusetts-Amherst), David Lazar (Northeastern University), Brendan O’Connor (University of Massachusetts-Amherst), Doug Rice (University of Massachusetts-Amherst), Sarah Shugars (Rutgers-New Brunswick), and Weiai (Wayne) Xu (University of Massachusetts-Amherst). Financial and administrative support comes from UMass' Computational Social Science Institute and the Data Analytics and Computational Social Science Program.
Below is the general schedule for the day. The full program can be found here.
General Schedule
Throughout the day, three panels will occur simultaneously during each time slot. Rooms are divided by conference, with two joint panels occurring in one of the Political Communication Preconference rooms. Room 1 begins with two joint panels between PaCSS and Political Communication and then transitions to Political Communication panels. Room 2 houses Political Communication panels throughout the day. Room 3 houses PaCSS panels throughout the day.
- 8:00 am Registration Opens & Coffee
- 8:30 – 9:45 am Panel 1
- 9:55 – 11:10 am Panel 2
- 11:20 am – 12:35 pm Panel 3
- 12:40 – 1:40 pm (Mentoring) Lunch
- 1:40 – 2:55 pm Panel 4
- 3:05 – 4:20 pm Panel 5
- 4:30 – 5:30 pm Keynote (Dr. Joshua Tucker, New York University)
- 6:00 – 8:00 pm Joint Reception (APSA PolComm, PaCSS, Politics of AI workshop)
Call for Papers
We are pleased to announce that the ninth annual Politics and Computational Social Science (PaCSS) conference will be held on September 2, 2026, as a pre-conference to the American Political Science Association’s Annual Meeting in Boston. The in-person conference will be held at Boston University, with UMass Amherst’s Computational Social Science Institute and Data Analytics and Computational Social Science program cosponsoring and coordinating. We hope that you will join us to share your work and support the continued growth of our diverse, interdisciplinary community of people working in industry, academia, government and nonprofits.
This year’s conference will be co-located with the Political Communication pre-conference at Boston University.
To submit your work for consideration at PaCSS 2026, please complete this form by Friday, May 8. Submissions should include an abstract for a single proposed talk or poster; the program committee will organize accepted submissions into panels. To get a sense of the breadth and diversity of content presented at PaCSS, you may wish to take a look at the PaCSS 2021 program.
PaCSS 2026 is co-chaired by Justin Gross and Kelsey Shoub (UMass Amherst), with support from Krista Gile, David Lazar, Brendan O’Connor, Doug Rice, Sarah Shugars, and Weiai (Wayne) Xu.
Please email ppplacss@gmail.com with any questions.
About PaCSS
The data and methodologies available to social scientists have exploded with the emergence of archives of digital data collection, large scale online experimentation, and innovative uses of simulation. The analysis of these data requires more complex methodological approaches and greater computational complexity than the approaches that have dominated the study of politics for the last 50 years.
The analysis of digital data offers the potential for rich insights into society at scale, but it also introduces new ethical and infrastructural challenges. In parallel, the information and communication technologies that have driven this data revolution are also driving changes in politics, around the world, that require study.
In order to understand the political world, it is increasingly important to gain access to the political communication and behavior occurring online. PaCSS, started in 2018 with about 150 attendees, offers a forum for computational social science research in this emerging space. Examples of relevant topics/approaches include: analysis of social media; text analysis; use of finely granular geographic data; and large scale online experimentation. Deeply committed to elevating the voices and work of populations which are underrepresented in computational spaces, PaCSS actively seek, welcome, and encourage people from all fields, industries, backgrounds, experiences, and identities to submit their work and attend.
