HOW MICROBLOG FOLLOWER NETWORKS AFFECT OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE PROJECT SUCCESS

Successful open source software (OSS) projects require efficient communication means and a steady supply of voluntary developers. Microblogging, as well as the follower network it generates, is becoming increasingly popular as an emerging Web 2.0 communication technology in many online OSS communities. However, little is known about how microblogging follower networks affect OSS project success. Based on theories drawn from the social network domain, OSS and virtual team research,we hypothesized two follower network mechanisms – preferential attachment and structural holes – which may significantly affect OSS project success, by improving knowledge sharing and attracting more skillful developers. We plan to empirically study a microblog follower network in a large online OSS community, aiming to examine the impacts of the two hypothesized follower network mechanisms on OSS project success. Our potential findings may provide insights for OSS project managers to better manage microblog communications and thereby achieve project success

A Critical Look at Decentralized Personal Data Architectures

While the Internet was conceived as a decentralized network, the most widely used web applications today tend toward centralization. Control increasingly rests with centralized service providers who, as a consequence, have also amassed unprecedented amounts of data about the behaviors and personalities of individuals. Developers, regulators, and consumer advocates have looked to alternative decentralized architectures as the natural response to threats posed by these centralized services. The result has been a great variety of solutions that include personal data stores (PDS), infomediaries, Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) systems, and federated and distributed social networks. And yet, for all these efforts, decentralized personal data architectures have seen little adoption. This position paper attempts to account for these failures, challenging the accepted wisdom in the web community on the feasibility and desirability of these approaches. We start with a historical discussion of the development of various categories of decentralized personal data architectures. Then we survey the main ideas to illustrate the common themes among these efforts. We tease apart the design characteristics of these systems from the social values that they (are intended to) promote. We use this understanding to point out numerous drawbacks of the decentralization paradigm, some inherent and others incidental. We end with recommendations for designers of these systems for working towards goals that are achievable, but perhaps more limited in scope and ambition

Measuring internet activity: a (selective) review of methods and metrics

Two Decades after the birth of the World Wide Web, more than two billion people around the world are Internet users. The digital landscape is littered with hints that the affordances of digital communications are being leveraged to transform life in profound and important ways. The reach and influence of digitally mediated activity grow by the day and touch upon all aspects of life, from health, education, and commerce to religion and governance. This trend demands that we seek answers to the biggest questions about how digitally mediated communication changes society and the role of different policies in helping or hindering the beneficial aspects of these changes. Yet despite the profusion of data the digital age has brought upon us—we now have access to a flood of information about the movements, relationships, purchasing decisions, interests, and intimate thoughts of people around the world—the distance between the great questions of the digital age and our understanding of the impact of digital communications on society remains large. A number of ongoing policy questions have emerged that beg for better empirical data and analyses upon which to base wider and more insightful perspectives on the mechanics of social, economic, and political life online. This paper seeks to describe the conceptual and practical impediments to measuring and understanding digital activity and highlights a sample of the many efforts to fill the gap between our incomplete understanding of digital life and the formidable policy questions related to developing a vibrant and healthy Internet that serves the public interest and contributes to human wellbeing. Our primary focus is on efforts to measure Internet activity, as we believe obtaining robust, accurate data is a necessary and valuable first step that will lead us closer to answering the vitally important questions of the digital realm. Even this step is challenging: the Internet is difficult to measure and monitor, and there is no simple aggregate measure of Internet activity—no GDP, no HDI. In the following section we present a framework for assessing efforts to document digital activity. The next three sections offer a summary and description of many of the ongoing projects that document digital activity, with two final sections devoted to discussion and conclusions

Yhteisöllinen tiedonrakentelu ja verkottunut asiantuntijuus Twitter-palvelussa : Case #okfest

Aims. This qualitative study explored a phenomenon of epistemic communality around a Twitter hashtag. The primary aim of the study was to explore communal epistemic production on the Twitter platform, especially in the context of a mutually shared hashtag. The study explored the peer-production of knowledge and epistemic structures in the context of a specialist domain collaborating in the open Web. The secondary aim was to explore how Twitter functions as a platform for networked expertise and as a public agora for practitioners' expert discourse. This nascent mode of cultural production leads to the development of expert cultures on Twitter and in the open Web. This creates new contexts for informal collaborative learning and cultral production potentially answering some of the competence challenges presented by the 21st century. Methods. The hashtag #okfest was launched for the 'Open Knowledge Festival' conference held in Helsinki, Finland (17–22.9.2012). The participants of the study were open knowledge practitioners who participated in the hashtag discourse of #okfest on Twitter. All public tweets containing the string '#okfest' were collected as data. Tweets were analyzed with qualitative thematic analysis exploring the epistemic contributions either included in the tweets or as hyperlinked attachments. Results and conclusions. The analysis indicated how the hashtag was appropriated to serve as a node of communal knowledge sharing beyond mere reporting from the conference. The analysis observed six themes of communal knowledge building in the hashtag space. The communal epistemic activities in #okfest were likened to the properties of a community of practice (Wenger, 1998). A network of practitioners engaging in a mutual domain creates a dynamic 'social learning system' combining social interaction with the production and dissemination of knowledge. The study yielded a novel theoretical concept of 'expert microblogging', recognized as a significant genre of cultural production in a specialist domain on Twitter and in the open Web. Finally the Twitter platform was ascertained as a site for the manifestation of cultures of networked expertise.Tavoitteet. Tämä laadullinen tutkielma tutki episteemistä yhteisöllisyyttä Twitter-palvelussa hashtag-aihetunnisteen ympärillä. Hashtag #okfest lanseerattiin Helsingissä pidetyn 'Open Knowledge Festival' –konferenssin taustakanavaksi 17–22.9.2012. Tutkielman pääasiallinen tavoite oli tutkia yhteisöllistä tiedonrakentelua Twitter-palvelussa erityisesti hashtagien ympärillä. Tutkimus kohdistui tietyn toimialan tiedolliseen vertaistuotantoon Twitterissä ja avoimessa Internetissä. Laajempi tavoite oli tutkia miten Twitter toimii alustana verkottuneelle asiantuntijuudelle ja julkisten asiantuntijayhteisöjen vuorovaikutukselle. Tämä uusi kulttuurisen tuotannon konteksti mahdollistaa verkottuneiden asiantuntijakulttuurien kehittymisen Twitterissä ja avoimessa Internetissä. Tämä luo uusia tilaisuuksia informaalille yhteisölliselle oppimiselle ja kulttuuriselle tuotannolle mahdollisesti vastaten nykyajan vaativiin osaamishaasteisiin. Menetelmät. Tutkimuksen osallistujat olivat avoimen datan ammattilaisia, jotka osallistuivat Twitterissä #okfest keskusteluun konferenssin aikana. Kaikki julkiset Twitter-viestit #okfest aihetunnisteella kerättiin aineistoksi. Viestejä analysoitiin laadullisella temaattisella analyysillä koskien niiden tiedollisia kontribuutioita joko viestiin sisältyen tai linkitettynä. Tulokset ja johtopäätökset. Tutkimustulokset osoittavat että hashtag-aihetunnisteen ympärille syntyi yhteisöllisen tiedonrakentelun ilmiö, joka oli enemmän kuin pelkkää raportointia tapahtumapaikalta. Analyysissä löytyi kuusi yhteisöllisen tiedonrakentelun teemaa jotka ilmenivät hashtag-tilassa. Yhteisöllinen tiedonrakentelu muistutti käytäntöyhteisöjen teoriaperinteen (Wenger, 1998) vuorovaikutuksen piirteitä. Asiantuntijoiden yhteisöllinen vuorovaikutus synnytti "sosiaalisen oppimisen systeemin" jossa tiedonrakentelu yhdistyi vuorovaikutukseen. Tutkimustuloksista nousi uusi käsitteellistys, asiantuntijoiden alakohtainen tiedollinen tuotanto (eng. expert microblogging). Twitter-alustalle paikantui verkottuneiden asiantuntijakulttuurien kehittyminen avoimessa verkossa

Twitter: A Professional Development and Community of Practice Tool for Teachers

This article shows how a group of language teachers use Twitter as a tool for continuous professional development through the #MFLtwitterati hashtag. Based on data collected through a survey (n=116) and interviews (n=11), it describes how this collective of teachers use the hashtag and evaluates the impact of their Twitter network on their teaching practices. The results show that most users try the suggestions and ideas that they find on this network, which have a positive impact on their teaching. Finally, the article assesses whether the hashtag users can be described as a community of practice

Social Information Systems: Review, Framework, and Research Agenda

In this research-in-progress, we review the literature on an emerging new type of information systems: social information systems. Social information systems are information systems based on social technologies and open collaboration. The paper provides categories defining social information systems and a framework for existing and future research in this field of study