Contextual Social Networking

The thesis centers around the multi-faceted research question of how contexts may be detected and derived that can be used for new context aware Social Networking services and for improving the usefulness of existing Social Networking services, giving rise to the notion of Contextual Social Networking. In a first foundational part, we characterize the closely related fields of Contextual-, Mobile-, and Decentralized Social Networking using different methods and focusing on different detailed aspects. A second part focuses on the question of how short-term and long-term social contexts as especially interesting forms of context for Social Networking may be derived. We focus on NLP based methods for the characterization of social relations as a typical form of long-term social contexts and on Mobile Social Signal Processing methods for deriving short-term social contexts on the basis of geometry of interaction and audio. We furthermore investigate, how personal social agents may combine such social context elements on various levels of abstraction. The third part discusses new and improved context aware Social Networking service concepts. We investigate special forms of awareness services, new forms of social information retrieval, social recommender systems, context aware privacy concepts and services and platforms supporting Open Innovation and creative processes. This version of the thesis does not contain the included publications because of copyrights of the journals etc. Contact in terms of the version with all included publications: Georg Groh, [email protected] zentrale Gegenstand der vorliegenden Arbeit ist die vielschichtige Frage, wie Kontexte detektiert und abgeleitet werden können, die dazu dienen können, neuartige kontextbewusste Social Networking Dienste zu schaffen und bestehende Dienste in ihrem Nutzwert zu verbessern. Die (noch nicht abgeschlossene) erfolgreiche Umsetzung dieses Programmes führt auf ein Konzept, das man als Contextual Social Networking bezeichnen kann. In einem grundlegenden ersten Teil werden die eng zusammenhängenden Gebiete Contextual Social Networking, Mobile Social Networking und Decentralized Social Networking mit verschiedenen Methoden und unter Fokussierung auf verschiedene Detail-Aspekte näher beleuchtet und in Zusammenhang gesetzt. Ein zweiter Teil behandelt die Frage, wie soziale Kurzzeit- und Langzeit-Kontexte als für das Social Networking besonders interessante Formen von Kontext gemessen und abgeleitet werden können. Ein Fokus liegt hierbei auf NLP Methoden zur Charakterisierung sozialer Beziehungen als einer typischen Form von sozialem Langzeit-Kontext. Ein weiterer Schwerpunkt liegt auf Methoden aus dem Mobile Social Signal Processing zur Ableitung sinnvoller sozialer Kurzzeit-Kontexte auf der Basis von Interaktionsgeometrien und Audio-Daten. Es wird ferner untersucht, wie persönliche soziale Agenten Kontext-Elemente verschiedener Abstraktionsgrade miteinander kombinieren können. Der dritte Teil behandelt neuartige und verbesserte Konzepte für kontextbewusste Social Networking Dienste. Es werden spezielle Formen von Awareness Diensten, neue Formen von sozialem Information Retrieval, Konzepte für kontextbewusstes Privacy Management und Dienste und Plattformen zur Unterstützung von Open Innovation und Kreativität untersucht und vorgestellt. Diese Version der Habilitationsschrift enthält die inkludierten Publikationen zurVermeidung von Copyright-Verletzungen auf Seiten der Journals u.a. nicht. Kontakt in Bezug auf die Version mit allen inkludierten Publikationen: Georg Groh, [email protected]

Políticas de Copyright de Publicações Científicas em Repositórios Institucionais: O Caso do INESC TEC

A progressiva transformação das práticas científicas, impulsionada pelo desenvolvimento das novas Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (TIC), têm possibilitado aumentar o acesso à informação, caminhando gradualmente para uma abertura do ciclo de pesquisa. Isto permitirá resolver a longo prazo uma adversidade que se tem colocado aos investigadores, que passa pela existência de barreiras que limitam as condições de acesso, sejam estas geográficas ou financeiras. Apesar da produção científica ser dominada, maioritariamente, por grandes editoras comerciais, estando sujeita às regras por estas impostas, o Movimento do Acesso Aberto cuja primeira declaração pública, a Declaração de Budapeste (BOAI), é de 2002, vem propor alterações significativas que beneficiam os autores e os leitores. Este Movimento vem a ganhar importância em Portugal desde 2003, com a constituição do primeiro repositório institucional a nível nacional. Os repositórios institucionais surgiram como uma ferramenta de divulgação da produção científica de uma instituição, com o intuito de permitir abrir aos resultados da investigação, quer antes da publicação e do próprio processo de arbitragem (preprint), quer depois (postprint), e, consequentemente, aumentar a visibilidade do trabalho desenvolvido por um investigador e a respetiva instituição. O estudo apresentado, que passou por uma análise das políticas de copyright das publicações científicas mais relevantes do INESC TEC, permitiu não só perceber que as editoras adotam cada vez mais políticas que possibilitam o auto-arquivo das publicações em repositórios institucionais, como também que existe todo um trabalho de sensibilização a percorrer, não só para os investigadores, como para a instituição e toda a sociedade. A produção de um conjunto de recomendações, que passam pela implementação de uma política institucional que incentive o auto-arquivo das publicações desenvolvidas no âmbito institucional no repositório, serve como mote para uma maior valorização da produção científica do INESC TEC.The progressive transformation of scientific practices, driven by the development of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which made it possible to increase access to information, gradually moving towards an opening of the research cycle. This opening makes it possible to resolve, in the long term, the adversity that has been placed on researchers, which involves the existence of barriers that limit access conditions, whether geographical or financial. Although large commercial publishers predominantly dominate scientific production and subject it to the rules imposed by them, the Open Access movement whose first public declaration, the Budapest Declaration (BOAI), was in 2002, proposes significant changes that benefit the authors and the readers. This Movement has gained importance in Portugal since 2003, with the constitution of the first institutional repository at the national level. Institutional repositories have emerged as a tool for disseminating the scientific production of an institution to open the results of the research, both before publication and the preprint process and postprint, increase the visibility of work done by an investigator and his or her institution. The present study, which underwent an analysis of the copyright policies of INESC TEC most relevant scientific publications, allowed not only to realize that publishers are increasingly adopting policies that make it possible to self-archive publications in institutional repositories, all the work of raising awareness, not only for researchers but also for the institution and the whole society. The production of a set of recommendations, which go through the implementation of an institutional policy that encourages the self-archiving of the publications developed in the institutional scope in the repository, serves as a motto for a greater appreciation of the scientific production of INESC TEC

Linguistic Representation and Processing of Copredication

This thesis addresses the lexical and psycholinguistic properties of copredication. In particular, it explores its acceptability, frequency, crosslinguistic and electrophysiological features. It proposes a general parsing bias to account for novel acceptability data, through which Complex-Simple predicate orderings are degraded across distinct nominal types relative to the reverse order. This bias, Incremental Semantic Complexity, states that the parser seeks to process linguistic representations in incremental stages of semantic complexity. English and Italian acceptability data are presented which demonstrate that predicate order preferences are based not on sense dominance but rather sense complexity. Initial evidence is presented indicating that pragmatic factors centred on coherence relations can impact copredication acceptability when such copredications host complex (but not simple) predicates. The real-time processing and electrophysiological properties of copredication are also presented, which serve to replicate and ground the acceptability dynamics presented in the thesis

Prospecting otherwise : stirring culture´s role in tackling the climate emergency

No pico do progresso preconizado desde o modernismo, que “hipernormaliza” (Yurchak 2006) um entendimento antropocêntrico de agência absoluta sobre o planeta, tornam-se hoje gritantemente audíveis as vozes críticas dos não-humanos: enfrentamos uma iminente colisão frontal com “Gaia” (Lovelock e Margulis 1974) e um provável fim de mundo como o conhecemos. As alterações climáticas e os desequilíbrios impostos ao Sistema Planetário da Terra pairam como um “hiperobjecto” (Morton 2013). A presente investigação pretende reflectir sobre as implicações culturais da actual crise climática e ecológica, e explorar o papel das práticas artísticas contemporâneas no combate às tendências de negação, desinteresse e desconhecimento face à ameaça existencial vigente. A proposta toma a forma de um programa de artes performativas e visuais a apresentar em Portugal ao longo da temporada 2023/2024 – incluindo onze locais em todo o país –, fundado num processo de escuta profunda das preocupações da sociedade portuguesa relativamente às alterações climáticas e inspirado num amplo legado de iniciativas no âmbito da programação cultural associada a estas temáticas. Prospecting Otherwise (PO) [Prospectar outro Devir] propõe-se contribuir para uma imperativa mudança de paradigma cultural, tendo em vista reconfigurar, através da experiência artística, modos de conhecimento e construção de sentido face ao colapso, na expectativa de instigar uma alternativa “ecocêntrica” (Curry 2006) de modos de ser, aliada a uma nova “ética de possibilidade” (Appadurai 2013). Este projecto procura debater modos de catalisar a capacidade partilhada de mudança radical, desenhando novas orientações para o emergente devir planetário, humano e nãohumano, hoje antecipado pela crise climática.As humans reach the peak of modernity’s achievements, anthropocentric worldviews have become “hypernormalised” (Yurchak 2006). However, nonhuman critical voices are louder than ever: eminently facing a frontal collision with “Gaia” (Lovelock and Margulis 1974), humankind may soon witness an end to an all-too-human world. Climate change and the unbalances imposed on the Earth’s Planetary System loom as an “hyperobject” (Morton 2013). The present research intends to deepen the understanding of the cultural implications of the current climate crisis and explore the role of contemporary artistic practices in countering trends of denialism, disengagement, and unknowingness. This endeavour takes the form of a performing and visual arts programme unfolding in eleven different venues across Portugal and throughout one season (2023/2024) – Prospecting Otherwise (PO) –, grounded in a process of “deep listening” (Oliveros 2005) to Portuguese societal concerns regarding climate change and inspired in preceding cultural programming initiatives echoing these topics. PO sets to contribute to an imperative cultural paradigm shift: it aims at reconfiguring, through the experience of art, means of knowing and making sense of impending collapse, towards an alternative, “ecocentric” (Curry 2006), “ethics of possibility” (Appadurai 2013). This project aims at discussing and practising modes of catalysing shared capacity for radical change, which might enable gearing away from the anticipated planetary “extinction as usual” (Rowan 2015)

Visionary Realism And The Emergence Of A Eudaimonistic Society: Metatheory In A Time Of Metacrisis

This thesis aims to support the conditions for the emergence of a eudaimonistic, freeflourishing planetary society by helping ignite the potentials of metatheory as a transformational cultural force vis-à-vis our complex twenty-first century challenges. I argue that metatheory in its appropriate form provides indispensable intellectual scaffolding for the crucial psycho-spiritual, cultural, and social transformations demanded by these interconnected global challenges, or what I call the metacrisis. I advance these aims, first, by reflection on the nature, role, and function of metatheory in geo-historical context, articulating a vision for the revindication of metatheory as integrative metatheory 2.0; and, second, the development of the contours of a particular metatheory through an exploratory-dialogical encounter between what are arguably amongst the most comprehensive and sophisticated integrative metatheories arising in the wake of postmodernism: namely, critical realism, founded by Roy Bhaskar (1944–2014), and integral theory, founded by Ken Wilber (1949–). Thus, in this thesis, I deploy the methodology of hermeneutical dialectics and the method of immanent critique to forge a non-preservative synthesis of aspects of these two metatheories into a new metatheory—a visionary realism—that might help us to better understand and wisely respond to the metacrisis. I then apply this visionary realist framework to sketch the contours of the metacrisis at large, analyzing and synthesizing the philosophical, cultural, and psychological aspects of the metacrisis to identify key principles and holistic solution patterns that may inform deliberate social transformation

Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for

Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality

Constructing “Climate Change Knowledge”: The example of small-scale farmers in the Swartland region, South Africa

During the last decades “Climate Change” has become a vital topic on national and international political agendas. There it is presented as an irrevocable fact of global impact and thus of universal relevance. What has often been neglected are local discourses of marginalized groups and their specific contextualization of “Climate Change” phenomena. The aim of this project, to develop another perspective along these dominant narratives, has resulted in the research question How is social reality reconstructed on the phenomenon of “Climate Change” among the “Emerging Black Farmers” in the Swartland region in Western Cape, South Africa? Taken as an example, “Climate Change Knowledge” is reconstructed through a case study on the information exchange between the NGO Goedgedacht Trust and local small-scale farmers in the post-Apartheid context of on-going political, social, economic and educational transition in South Africa. Applying a constructivist approach, “Climate Change Knowledge” is not understood as an objectively given, but a socially constructed “reality” that is based on the interdependency of socio-economic conditions and individual assets, including language skills and language practice, sets of social norms and values, as well as strategies of knowledge transfer. The data set consists of qualitative data sources, such as application forms and interview material, which are triangulated. The rationale of a multi-layered data analysis includes a discursive perspective as well as linguistic and ethical “side perspectives”. Epistemologically, the thesis is guided by assumptions of complexity theory, framing knowledge around “Climate Change” as a fluid, constantly changing system that is shaped by constant intra- and inter-systemic exchange processes, and characterized by non-linearity, self-organization and representation of its constituents. From this point of departure, a theoretical terminology has been developed, which differentiates between symbols, interrelations, contents and content clusters. These elements are located in a system of spatio-temporal orientation and embedded into a broader (socio-economic) context of “historicity”. Content clusters are remodelled with the help of concept maps. Starting from that, a local perspective on “Climate Change” is developed, adding an experiential notion to the global narratives. The thesis concludes that there is no single reality about “Climate Change” and that the farmers’ “Climate Change Knowledge” highly depends on experiential relativity and spatio-temporal immediacy. Furthermore, analysis has shown that the system’s historicity and social manifestations can be traced in the scope and emphasis of the content clusters discussed. Finally the thesis demonstrates that characteristics of symbols, interconnections and contents range between dichotomies of direct and indirect, predictable versus unpredictable, awareness and negligence or threat and danger, all coexisting and creating a continuum of knowledge production