Challenges of digital innovations : a set-top box based approach

The chapter analyses the challenges of digital technology for television audience measurement systems. First, the current state of audience measurement in Belgium is described. In the Belgian case, the traditional television audience measurement system is contested by small broadcasters and challenged by the opportunities that the emergence of digital television and, more specifically, the widespread diffusion of set-top boxes provide. Second, three major challenges for traditional measurement techniques are analysed. This section deals with people’s changing viewing habits, for example on-demand and time-shifted viewing, the provision of more accurate data by set-top boxes, and the increasing interests of platform operators acting as gatekeepers to access to this data. In the final section, conclusions are made

Anatomy of the Third-Party Web Tracking Ecosystem

The presence of third-party tracking on websites has become customary. However, our understanding of the third-party ecosystem is still very rudimentary. We examine third-party trackers from a geographical perspective, observing the third-party tracking ecosystem from 29 countries across the globe. When examining the data by region (North America, South America, Europe, East Asia, Middle East, and Oceania), we observe significant geographical variation between regions and countries within regions. We find trackers that focus on specific regions and countries, and some that are hosted in countries outside their expected target tracking domain. Given the differences in regulatory regimes between jurisdictions, we believe this analysis sheds light on the geographical properties of this ecosystem and on the problems that these may pose to our ability to track and manage the different data silos that now store personal data about us all

The Rise of Mobile and the Diffusion of Technology-Facilitated Trafficking

In this report, researchers at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy (CCLP) reveal how those involved in human trafficking have been quick to adapt to the 21st-century global landscape. While the rapid diffusion of digital technologies such as mobile phones, social networking sites, and the Internet has provided significant benefits to society, new channels and opportunities for exploitation have also emerged. Increasingly, the business of human trafficking is taking place online and over mobile phones. But the same technologies that are being used for trafficking can become a powerful tool to combat trafficking. The precise role that digital technologies play in human trafficking still remains unclear, however, and a closer examination of the phenomenon is vital to identify and respond to new threats and opportunities.This investigation indicates that mobile devices and networks have risen in prominence and are now of central importance to the sex trafficking of minors in the United States. While online platforms such as online classifieds and social networking sites remain a potential venue for exploitation, this research suggests that technology facilitated trafficking is more diffuse and adaptive than initially thought. This report presents a review of current literature, trends, and policies; primary research based on mobile phone data collected from online classified sites; a series of firsthand interviews with law enforcement; and key recommendations to policymakers and stakeholders moving forward

Privacy Implications of Health Information Seeking on the Web

This article investigates privacy risks to those visiting health- related web pages. The population of pages analyzed is derived from the 50 top search results for 1,986 common diseases. This yielded a total population of 80,124 unique pages which were analyzed for the presence of third-party HTTP requests. 91% of pages were found to make requests to third parties. Investigation of URIs revealed that 70% of HTTP Referer strings contained information exposing specific conditions, treatments, and diseases. This presents a risk to users in the form of personal identification and blind discrimination. An examination of extant government and corporate policies reveals that users are insufficiently protected from such risks

The Lifecycles of Apps in a Social Ecosystem

Apps are emerging as an important form of on-line content, and they combine aspects of Web usage in interesting ways --- they exhibit a rich temporal structure of user adoption and long-term engagement, and they exist in a broader social ecosystem that helps drive these patterns of adoption and engagement. It has been difficult, however, to study apps in their natural setting since this requires a simultaneous analysis of a large set of popular apps and the underlying social network they inhabit. In this work we address this challenge through an analysis of the collection of apps on Facebook Login, developing a novel framework for analyzing both temporal and social properties. At the temporal level, we develop a retention model that represents a user's tendency to return to an app using a very small parameter set. At the social level, we organize the space of apps along two fundamental axes --- popularity and sociality --- and we show how a user's probability of adopting an app depends both on properties of the local network structure and on the match between the user's attributes, his or her friends' attributes, and the dominant attributes within the app's user population. We also develop models that show the importance of different feature sets with strong performance in predicting app success.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, 3 tables, International World Wide Web Conferenc