Big Theory: A Trojan Horse for Economics?

These are exciting times for sociologists. Device-mediated communications enable unprecedented empirical opportunities to obtain real-time data on individual human interactions on a global scale. To realize this potential, the critical need is not a universally applicable theoretical framework but a widely shared analytical toolkit of models and methods for middle-range theorizing, including methods to collect, process, and analyze massive data, and to conduct online experiments with randomized assignment involving large numbers of participants.