Statistical mechanics has proven to be a very fruitful framework to
describe phenomena outside the realm of traditional physics. The last
years have witnessed the attempt by physicists to study phenomena
which heavily rely on human behavior, like the dynamics of financial
markets and the emergence of collective organization in social
systems. Stochastic dynamics, phase transitions, scaling,
metastability and other concepts and tools of statistical physics have
then come into play in the study of social phenomena. Microscopic
models have been devised, where each individual is represented by few
degrees of freedom, which quantify its relevant attributes, and simple
rules for the interaction of the individuals with their peers
determine the dynamics. In the last few years we have been focusing on
three major research lines, i.e. opinion dynamics, cultural dynamics
and the creation and evolution of language. On these subjects a
a review article, appeared in Reviews of Modern Physics.

Our activity is focused in two main directions: Online social dynamics, Language dynamics