Forgotten as data – remembered through information. Social memory institutions in the digital age: the case of the Europeana Initiative

The study of social memory has emerged as a rich field of research closely linked to cultural artefacts, communication media and institutions as carriers of a past that transcends the horizon of the individual’s lifetime. Within this domain of research, the dissertation focuses on memory institutions (libraries, archives, museums) and the shifts they are undergoing as the outcome of digitization and the diffusion of online media. Very little is currently known about the impact that digitality and computation may have on social memory institutions, specifically, and social memory, more generally – an area of study that would benefit from but, so far, has been mostly overlooked by information systems research. The dissertation finds its point of departure in the conceptualization of information as an event that occurs through the interaction between an observer and the observed – an event that cannot be stored as information but merely as data. In this context, memory is conceived as an operation that filters, thus forgets, the singular details of an information event by making it comparable to other events according to abstract classification criteria. Against this backdrop, memory institutions are institutions of forgetting as they select, order and preserve a canon of cultural heritage artefacts. Supported by evidence from a case study on the Europeana initiative (a digitization project of European libraries, archives and museums), the dissertation reveals a fundamental shift in the field of memory institutions. The case study demonstrates the disintegration of 1) the cultural heritage artefact, 2) its standard modes of description and 3) the catalogue as such into a steadily accruing assemblage of data and metadata. Dismembered into bits and bytes, cultural heritage needs to be re-membered through the emulation of recognizable cultural heritage artefacts and momentary renditions of order. In other words, memory institutions forget as binary-based data and remember through computational information

New media, new citizens: the terms and conditions of online youth civic engagement.

The increasingly salient role of new media in young people's lives has led to a debate about the potential of the internet as a means of political communication and youth participation. While a growing body of scholarship has engaged 'Nith the issue, there is lack of empirical research linking young people's civic motivations to their internet uses, and in particular to their evaluations, as users, of UK civic websites. This thesis brings together the study of youth civic engagement and the practice of user experience in order to explore the civic factors and website elements that motivate young people to participate via the internet. Employing a large survey and a qualitative study of a purposively sampled community of young citizens and internet users, the research explores youth civic needs and how these translate into specific uses of the web. Furthermore, a comprehensive content analysis of twenty civic websites is juxtaposed with a user experience study, in order to facilitate a dialogue between the online text and the users. The core argument of this study is that young people are willing to engage with public affairs via civic websites as long as a series of "terms and conditions" are met that would make this engagement meaningful to them. These include the existence of visible benefits or outcomes from the participation process and the relevance of the issue to the individual's lifeworld. It is argued that the preconditions set by these young people constitute a coherent paradigm of an essentially consumerist approach to civic engagement; a mode of online political communication that is based around convenience, personalisation and emotional engagement. However, a feeling of civic loneliness was also manifest in the participants' narratives and there were strong indications that any sense of alienation should not be attributed to apathy, but to a fundamental scepticism about the ability of the individual to make a difference at the social level. The evidence suggests that, while technology has a role in providing users with accessible and effective online tools, the root cause of the problem may be in the social structures of the civic culture, and particUlarly in the mechanisms of political socialisation that facilitate civic motivation. Hence, the study reaffirms the importance of the affective, symbolic and political dimensions of participation and argues that these need to be integrated along with traditional (technological and psychological) elements of user experience in order to achieve civic usability

Cultural Heritage on line

The 2nd International Conference "Cultural Heritage online – Empowering users: an active role for user communities" was held in Florence on 15-16 December 2009. It was organised by the Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale, the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities and the Library of Congress, through the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program - NDIIP partners. The conference topics were related to digital libraries, digital preservation and the changing paradigms, focussing on user needs and expectations, analysing how to involve users and the cultural heritage community in creating and sharing digital resources. The sessions investigated also new organisational issues and roles, and cultural and economic limits from an international perspective

The online obstacle : a study of African-American enterprise on the Internet

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2010.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 73-74).Iconic Web companies based in the US, along the likes of Google, Facebook, and Twitter, have exhibited some racial/ethnic diversity among their founders, yet there appears to be a dearth of African-Americans in the group. In this thesis I conduct an empirical investigation into the potential existence of a set of impediments to blockbuster success for African-American founded consumer Internet companies -- or an "online obstacle," as I have chosen to term the condition. In utilizing a short-form survey and telephone interviews to collect the thoughts and opinions of 16 black entrepreneurs who have made at least one attempt at launching a consumer Internet start-up, I document three recurrent themes. First, there do not appear to be enough African-American graduates of engineering and computer science disciplines to facilitate creation of promising Internet ventures that could achieve blockbuster status. Second, black Web entrepreneurs by-and-large have not achieved the heights of capital infusion that seems to be necessary to transition a concept from "successful" to "blockbuster." Lastly, African-American founders of consumer Internet companies do not in any significant numbers appear to live and play in the start-up ecosystem that is Silicon Valley, inhibiting development of relationships and access to resources needed to ascend to blockbuster status online. Overall, my findings suggest that the online obstacle I seek to identify is very much a collection of barriers that has a direct correlation to issues black entrepreneurs have spoken about for decades, suggesting that any revealed online obstacle very much lacks an online origin.by Allen T. Lamb.M.B.A

Design and Instantiation of an Interactive Multidimensional Ontology for Game Design Elements – a Design and Behavioral Approach

While games and play are commonly perceived as leisure tools, focus on the strategic implementation of isolated gameful elements outside of games has risen in recent years under the term gamification. Given their ease of implementation and impact in competitive games, a small set of game design elements, namely points, badges, and leaderboards, initially dominated research and practice. However, these elements reflect only a small group of components that game designers use to achieve positive outcomes in their systems. Current research has shifted towards focusing on the game design process instead of the isolated implementation of single elements under the term gameful design. But the problem of a tendency toward a monocultural selection of prominent design elements persists in-game and gameful design, preventing the method from reaching its full potential. This dissertation addresses this problem by designing and developing a digital, interactive game design element ontology that scholars and practitioners can use to make more informed and inspired decisions in creating gameful solutions to their problems. The first part of this work is concerned with the collation and development of the digital ontology. First, two datasets were collated from game design and gamification literature (game design elements and playing motivations). Next, four explorative studies were conducted to add user-relevant metadata and connect their items into an ontological structure. The first two studies use card sorting to assess game theory frameworks regarding their suitability as foundational categories for the game design element dataset and to gain an overview of different viewpoints from which categorizations can be derived. The second set of studies builds on an explorative method of matching dataset entries via their descriptive keywords to arrive at a connected graph. The first of these studies connects items of the playing motivations dataset with themselves, while the second connects them with an additional dataset of human needs. The first part closes with the documentation of the design and development of the tool Kubun, reporting on the outcome of its evaluation via iterative expert interviews and a field study. The results suggest that the tool serves its preset goals of affording intuitive browsing for dedicated searches and serendipitous findings. While the first part of this work reports on the top-down development process of the ontology and related navigation tool, the second part presents an in-depth research of specific learning-oriented game design elements to complement the overall research goal through a complementary bottom-up approach. Therein, two studies on learning-oriented game design elements are reported regarding their effect on performance, long-term learning outcome, and knowledge transfer. The studies are conducted with a game dedicated to teaching correct waste sorting. The first study focuses on a reward-based game design element in terms of its motivatory effect on perfect play. The second study evaluates two learning-enhancing game design elements, repeat, and look-up, in terms of their contribution to a long-term learning outcome. The comprehensive insights gained through the in-depth research manifest in the design of a module dedicated to reporting research outcomes in the ontology. The dissertation concludes with a discussion on the studies’ varying limitations and an outlook on pathways for future research

Cognitive Foundations for Visual Analytics

In this report, we provide an overview of scientific/technical literature on information visualization and VA. Topics discussed include an update and overview of the extensive literature search conducted for this study, the nature and purpose of the field, major research thrusts, and scientific foundations. We review methodologies for evaluating and measuring the impact of VA technologies as well as taxonomies that have been proposed for various purposes to support the VA community. A cognitive science perspective underlies each of these discussions

Minds Online: The Interface between Web Science, Cognitive Science, and the Philosophy of Mind

Alongside existing research into the social, political and economic impacts of the Web, there is a need to study the Web from a cognitive and epistemic perspective. This is particularly so as new and emerging technologies alter the nature of our interactive engagements with the Web, transforming the extent to which our thoughts and actions are shaped by the online environment. Situated and ecological approaches to cognition are relevant to understanding the cognitive significance of the Web because of the emphasis they place on forces and factors that reside at the level of agent–world interactions. In particular, by adopting a situated or ecological approach to cognition, we are able to assess the significance of the Web from the perspective of research into embodied, extended, embedded, social and collective cognition. The results of this analysis help to reshape the interdisciplinary configuration of Web Science, expanding its theoretical and empirical remit to include the disciplines of both cognitive science and the philosophy of mind

Comparing the efficacy of different web page interface attributes in facilitating information retrieval for people with mild Learning Disabilities

This research aimed to determine what web page attributes facilitate optimal website design for use by learning-disabled people – a topic hitherto rarely addressed. Qualitative research developed methods appropriate for this cohort, determined attributes that impact on usability and explored ways of eliciting preferences. Attributes related to menu position, text size and images, which were then examined quantitatively by comparing web pages of different layouts. Task-times were analysed, determining which attributes have the greatest impact on performance. The main predictor of task-time was menu position, followed by text size. Images did not affect performance. The study also found that learning-disabled people have only ‘serial access’ to information when searching individual pages – it being imbibed sequentially until the required content is reached. Words on the left of horizontal menus were found quicker than those in the middle or right. Information access took longer from vertical menus, possibly because of the juxtaposition of distracting body text. Images were ignored until reached ‘serially’– and thus did not help signpost content. Small-text was consumed quicker than large, as the latter took up more lines and required more eye movements to negotiate. A three category rating scale and simple interviews elicited web design preferences. The ‘neutral’ category proved troublesome and so a refined four category scale without this mid-point was adopted which yielded a greater variety of results. In verbally eliciting preferences, ‘acquiescence bias’ was minimised by avoiding polar interrogatives - partly achieved by comparing different designs. Preferred designs were for large-text and images – the reverse of those facilitating fastest retrieval times, a discrepancy due to preferences being judged on aesthetic considerations. Design recommendations are offered which reconcile preference and performance findings. These include using a horizontal menu, juxtaposing images and text, and reducing text from sentences to phrases – facilitating preferred large-text without increasing task-times

Anomaly detection of web-based attacks

Tese de mestrado em Segurança Informática, apresentada à Universidade de Lisboa, através da Faculdade de Ciências, 2010Para prevenir ataques com sucesso, é crucial que exista um sistema de detecção que seja preciso e completo. Os sistemas de detecção de intrusão (IDS) baseados em assinaturas são uma das abordagens mais conhecidas para o efeito, mas não são adequados para detectar ataques web ou ataques previamente desconhecidos. O objectivo deste projecto passa pelo estudo e desenho de um sistema de detecção de intrusão baseado em anomalias capaz de detectar esses tipos de ataques. Os IDS baseados em anomalias constroem um modelo de comportamento normal através de dados de treino, e em seguida utilizam-no para detectar novos ataques. Na maioria dos casos, este modelo é representativo de mais exemplos de comportamento normal do que os presentes nos dados de treino, característica esta a que chamamos generalização e que é fundamental para aumentar a precisão na detecção de anomalias. A precisão da detecção e, portanto, a utilidade destes sistemas, é consideravelmente influenciada pela fase de construção do modelo (muitas vezes chamada fase de treino), que depende da existência de um conjunto de dados sem ataques que se assemelhe ao comportamento normal da aplicação protegida. A construção de modelos correctos é particularmente importante, caso contrário, durante a fase de detecção, provavelmente serão geradas grandes quantidades de falsos positivos e falsos negativos pelo IDS. Esta dissertação detalha a nossa pesquisa acerca da utilização de métodos baseados em anomalias para detectar ataques contra servidores e aplicações web. As nossas contribuições incidem sobre três vertentes distintas: i) procedimentos avançados de treino que permitem aos sistemas de detecção baseados em anomalias um bom funcionamento, mesmo em presença de aplicações complexas e dinâmicas, ii) um sistema de detecção de intrusão que compreende diversas técnicas de detecção de anomalias capazes de reconhecer e identificar ataques contra servidores e aplicações web e iii) uma avaliação do sistema e das técnicas mais adequadas para a detecção de ataques, utilizando um elevado conjunto de dados reais de tráfego pertencentes a uma aplicação web de grandes dimensões alojada em servidores de produção num ISP Português.To successfully prevent attacks it is vital to have a complete and accurate detection system. Signature-based intrusion detection systems (IDS) are one of the most popular approaches, but they are not adequate for detection of web-based or novel attacks. The purpose of this project is to study and design an anomaly-based intrusion detection system capable of detecting those kinds of attacks. Anomaly-based IDS can create a model of normal behavior from a set of training data, and then use it to detect novel attacks. In most cases, this model represents more instances than those in the training data set, a characteristic that we designate as generalization and which is necessary for accurate anomaly detection. The accuracy of such systems, which determines their effectiveness, is considerably influenced by the model building phase (often called training), which depends on having data that is free from attacks resembling the normal operation of the protected application. Having good models is particularly important, or else significant amounts of false positives and false negatives will likely be generated by the IDS during the detection phase. This dissertation details our research on the use of anomaly-based methods to detect attacks against web servers and applications. Our contributions focus on three different strands: i) advanced training procedures that enable anomaly-based learning systems to perform well even in presence of complex and dynamic web applications; ii) a system comprising several anomaly detection techniques capable of recognizing and identifying attacks against web servers and applications and iii) an evaluation of the system and of the most suitable techniques for anomaly detection of web attacks, using a large data set of real-word traffic belonging to a web application of great dimensions hosted in production servers of a Portuguese ISP