Extracting Touristic Information from Online Image Collections

In this paper, we present a Geographical Information Retrieval system, which aims to automatically extract and analyze touristic information from photos of online image collections (in our case of study Flickr). Our system collect all the photos, and the related information, that are associated to a specific city. We then use Google Maps service to geolocate the retrieved photos, and finally we analyze geo-referenced data to obtain our goals: 1) determining and locating the most interesting places of the city, i.e. the most visited locations, and 2) reconstructing touristic routes of the users visiting the city. Information is filtered by using a set of constraints, which we apply to select only the users that reasonably are tourists visiting the city. Tests were performed on an Italian city, Palermo, that is rich in artistic and touristic attractions, but preliminary tests showed that our technique could successfully be applied to any city in the world with a reasonable number of touristic landmarks

Do-It-Yourself street views and the urban imaginary of Google Street View

Google Street View (GSV) is the de facto platform for street-level visual representation in most settings; however, its coverage is highly uneven due to a range of political, legal, technological, and economic factors. GSV’s spatiotemporal disparities are most evident within cities, and this advances a distorted urban imaginary of absences, fragments, and obsolescences. This paper traces key developments in 360° imaging poised to expand the production and consumption of street-level imagery, including new actors, platforms, technologies, and data production approaches. Then, engaging with consumer-grade imaging technologies and the notion of do-it-yourself urbanism, this paper develops a DIY street view approach as one new mode of producing street-level imagery. Drawing on the findings of a pilot study, the paper considers key practical issues for street-view production, the benefits and risks of DIY approaches in relation to corporate and crowdsourced imagery initiatives, and the politics of urban representation in 360°. Findings suggest that the DIY approach offers the potential for a more “careful curation” of space in 360° street-level representations; however, there are considerations specific to this “third way” that require further attention

Content Creators Between Platform Control and User Autonomy. The Role of Algorithms and Revenue Sharing

Content creators generate and upload content on social media platforms. If these platforms have a revenue-sharing policy, content creators earn income from advertising revenue. This income is heavily dependent on the distribution of the content and the resulting view counts. Platform owners may exert algorithmic control that impacts content distribution, advertising income, and, consequently, the behaviour of content creators. The objectives of the platform owners combined with the interests of the content creators may lead to paradoxical tensions between the aims of control and autonomy. The opaque nature of algorithms coupled with the need to be recognised by the algorithm further reinforces this phenomenon. This study follows an interpretive qualitative research approach applying grounded theory methodology. This research uses semi-structured interviews with content creators to develop a theory explaining the tension between control and autonomy on revenue-sharing social media platforms. The study shows that algorithmic control and incentivisation create paradoxical tensions that affect the autonomy of content creators. Content creators attempt to minimise tensions of algorithm versus audience, regularity versus scheduling autonomy, and analytics versus decision-making autonomy in two ways: through self-centred measures such as improving metrics, pre-production, and being a pioneer and extraneous measures involving their own businesses, products, and sponsorships. This study sheds some light on the phenomenon of paradoxical tensions and provides guidance and strategies for content creators and platform owners about proceeding with their relationship. This study’s findings provide platform owners and decision-makers with a deeper understanding of the behaviour of content creators and the hurdles they face in platform work. The findings help them identify challenges, draw conclusions, and implement changes

Découverte d'évènements par contenu visuel dans les médias sociaux

The ease of publishing content on social media sites brings to the Web an ever increasing amount of user generated content captured during, and associated with, real life events. Social media documents shared by users often reflect their personal experience of the event. Hence, an event can be seen as a set of personal and local views, recorded by different users. These event records are likely to exhibit similar facets of the event but also specific aspects. By linking different records of the same event occurrence we can enable rich search and browsing of social media events content. Specifically, linking all the occurrences of the same event would provide a general overview of the event. In this dissertation we present a content-based approach for leveraging the wealth of social media documents available on the Web for event identification and characterization. To match event occurrences in social media, we develop a new visual-based method for retrieving events in huge photocollections, typically in the context of User Generated Content. The main contributions of the thesis are the following : (1) a new visual-based method for retrieving events in photo collections, (2) a scalable and distributed framework for Nearest Neighbors Graph construction for high dimensional data, (3) a collaborative content-based filtering technique for selecting relevant social media documents for a given event.L’évolution du web, de ce qui était typiquement connu comme un moyen de communication à sens unique en mode conversationnel, a radicalement changé notre manière de traiter l’information. Des sites de médias sociaux tels que Flickr et Facebook, offrent des espaces d’échange et de diffusion de l’information. Une information de plus en plus riche, mais aussi personnelle, et qui s’organise, le plus souvent, autour d’événements de la vie réelle. Ainsi, un événement peut être perçu comme un ensemble de vues personnelles et locales, capturées par différents utilisateurs. Identifier ces différentes instances permettrait, dès lors, de reconstituer une vue globale de l’événement. Plus particulièrement, lier différentes instances d’un même événement profiterait à bon nombre d’applications tel que la recherche, la navigation ou encore le filtrage et la suggestion de contenus. L’objectif principal de cette thèse est l’identification du contenu multimédia, associé à un événement dans de grandes collections d’images. Une première contribution est une méthode de recherche d’événements basée sur le contenu visuel. La deuxième contribution est une approche scalable et distribuée pour la construction de graphes des K plus proches voisins. La troisième contribution est une méthode collaborative pour la sélection de contenu pertinent. Plus particulièrement, nous nous intéresserons aux problèmes de génération automatique de résumés d’événements et suggestion de contenus dans les médias sociaux

“For What We Do Today Becomes the History of Tomorrow”: A History of the Bay View Historical Society, 1979-2015

This dissertation presents a history of the Bay View Historical Society (BVHS), a non-profit cultural heritage institution located in the Bay View neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Since its creation in 1979, the BVHS has assumed numerous roles related to preservation, documentation, education, information provision, social interaction, and public appreciation around the neighborhood’s history. This study’s overarching purpose is to examine how a modern local historical society assumes and approaches its role within the community it seeks to document, preserve, celebrate, and enrich. The central contention is that such institutions are given life when a range of conditions are conducive for the streams of historical consciousness within a community to converge with the structures and instruments of the historical enterprise. The analysis and narrative tracks internal and external developments that influenced the BVHS’s creation and growth over four decades (1979-2015), focusing on its primary activities, goals, and pursuits, and how it communicated its self-assigned or assumed roles. During this time, the BVHS assumed a position of authority on the neighborhood’s history by emphasizing both physical symbols and historical storytelling that inspired its membership and engaged the wider community

Teaching and learning in virtual worlds: is it worth the effort?

Educators have been quick to spot the enormous potential afforded by virtual worlds for situated and authentic learning, practising tasks with potentially serious consequences in the real world and for bringing geographically dispersed faculty and students together in the same space (Gee, 2007; Johnson and Levine, 2008). Though this potential has largely been realised, it generally isn’t without cost in terms of lack of institutional buy-in, steep learning curves for all participants, and lack of a sound theoretical framework to support learning activities (Campbell, 2009; Cheal, 2007; Kluge & Riley, 2008). This symposium will explore the affordances and issues associated with teaching and learning in virtual worlds, all the time considering the question: is it worth the effort

Transforming pre-service teacher curriculum: observation through a TPACK lens

This paper will discuss an international online collaborative learning experience through the lens of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework. The teacher knowledge required to effectively provide transformative learning experiences for 21st century learners in a digital world is complex, situated and changing. The discussion looks beyond the opportunity for knowledge development of content, pedagogy and technology as components of TPACK towards the interaction between those three components. Implications for practice are also discussed. In today’s technology infused classrooms it is within the realms of teacher educators, practising teaching and pre-service teachers explore and address effective practices using technology to enhance learning

Diversity: Best Practices: A Handbook for Journalism and Mass Communications Educators

Discusses compliance with the council's diversity standard, proposed revisions, and assessment. Presents examples of best practices in ensuring diversity in curricula, faculty, student body, and campus environment, with excerpts of course descriptions