Social network analysis for technology-enhanced learning: review and future directions

Sie, R. L. L., Ullmann, T. D., Rajagopal, K., Cela, K., Bitter-Rijpkema, M., & Sloep, P. B. (2012). Social network analysis for technology-enhanced learning: review and future directions. International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning, 4(3/4), 172-190.By nature, learning is social. The interactions by which we learn from others inherently form a network of relationships among people, but also between people and resources. This paper gives an overview of the potential social network analysis (SNA) may have for social learning. It starts with an overview of the history of social learning and how SNA may be of value. The core of the paper outlines the state-of-art of SNA for technology-enhanced learning (TEL), by means of four possible types of SNA applications: visualisation, analysis, simulation, and interventions. In an outlook, future directions of SNA research for TEL are provided

COVID-19 school closures in low-and middle-income countries: Emergent perspectives on the role of educational technology

The Covid-19 pandemic ushered in school closures at an unprecedented scale and prompted educational systems to find alternative teaching models at short notice. The role for educational technology in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) has recently become the focus of much discussion. While prompted by the pandemic, the discussions surface latent issues in educational systems, and the perspectives and ambitions of organisations in relation to educational technology and LMICs. The influence of the discussions during this period is likely to extend beyond the initial crisis, and warrants investigation. This paper presents a thematic analysis, using a grounded theory approach, of documents published online between February and April 2020. Five themes emerge, in relation to access, responses, support from carers, teachers and communities, educational quality and the future

The Impact of Blogs on State Politics

Information is the currency of democracy -Thomas Jefferson This research offers the first comprehensive study of state-focused political bloggers in the United States. Applying original data from the author’s nationwide survey of state-focused bloggers conducted during the summer of 2007, this study addresses three primary research questions: Who are the people creating blogs focused on state politics? What motivates these people to initiate and maintain their blogs? Do these blogs play a discernable role in a given state’s politics, and if so, how? Rooted in the literature of framing; agenda setting; uses and gratifications; news norms and routines; media and democratic accountability; and political knowledge, efficacy and engagement, this research considers the impact of the blogosphere on politics at the state level, finding many similarities between state-focused bloggers and their already-studied brethren at the national level. Findings presented here include demographic data, information concerning state-focused bloggers’ attitudes toward state and national media, and information about these bloggers’ political attitudes. To complement the quantitative survey data, this study also includes three case studies using the four stages of frame development presented by Miller and Riechert in their discussion of the spiral of opportunity (2001). To the author’s knowledge this is the first time Miller and Riechert’s work has been applied to the blogosphere. Ultimately defining impact as influencing the framing of an issue in the state political context, this research indicates that blogs are indeed having an impact in state politics

ransmedia literacy in the new media ecology: Teens’ transmedia skills and informal learning strategies

The emergence of new media and platforms has compelled media literacy scholars to review their theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches. Based on a new conception –‘transmedia literacy’– that moves from traditional media literacy (teaching critical media skills at school) to informal learning and participatory cultures, the research behind the present article aims to understand how new generations are doing things with media and how they learn to do the things they do. The outputs of this international research that involved 8 countries were organised into three sections: 1) transmedia skills, 2) informal learning strategies and 3) emergent issues regarding teens, new media and collaborative cultures. Finally, the article deals with the future perspectives of transmedia literacy as a research and action programme

The impact of ICT expansion on promoting democracy and economic freedom in the Middle East (1995-2005)

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references.The PhD study has found that ICT expansion has positively influenced democratic freedom, information sharing and dissemination and provides a public sphere for discourse among citizens of the eleven Middle Eastern countries. This thesis also found that ICT expansion positively influences economic freedom in the eleven Middle Eastern countries. However, differences between countries such as the educational attainment of their citizens and institutional resistance to ICT utilization both enhanced and restricted the relationship between ICT and economic freedom in the regio

Agent Based Simulation of Group Emotions Evolution and Strategy Intervention in Extreme Events

Agent based simulation method has become a prominent approach in computational modeling and analysis of public emergency management in social science research. The group emotions evolution, information diffusion, and collective behavior selection make extreme incidents studies a complex system problem, which requires new methods for incidents management and strategy evaluation. This paper studies the group emotion evolution and intervention strategy effectiveness using agent based simulation method. By employing a computational experimentation methodology, we construct the group emotion evolution as a complex system and test the effects of three strategies. In addition, the events-chain model is proposed to model the accumulation influence of the temporal successive events. Each strategy is examined through three simulation experiments, including two make-up scenarios and a real case study. We show how various strategies could impact the group emotion evolution in terms of the complex emergence and emotion accumulation influence in extreme events. This paper also provides an effective method of how to use agent-based simulation for the study of complex collective behavior evolution problem in extreme incidents, emergency, and security study domains

Viral Marketing: Identifying Likely Adopters Via Consumer Networks

We investigate the hypothesis: those consumers who have communicated with a customer of a particular service have increased likelihood of adopting the service. We survey the diverse literature on such "viral marketing," providing a categorization of the specific research questions asked, the data analyzed, and the statistical methods used. We highlight a striking gap in the literature: no prior study has had both of the two key types of data necessary to provide direct support for the hypothesis: data on communications between consumers, and data on product adoption. We suggest a type of service for which both types of data are available telecommunications services. Then, for a particular telecommunication service, we show support for the hypothesis. Specifically, we show three main results. 1) there is such a "viral" effect and it is statistically significant, resulting in take rates 3-5 times greater than a baseline group; 2) attributes constructed from the consumer network can improve models for ranking of targeted customers by likelihood of adoption, and 3) observing the network allows the firm to target new customers that would have fallen through the cracks, because they would not have been identified based solely on the traditional set of attributes used for marketing by the firm. We close with a discussion of challenges and opportunities for research in this area. For example, can one determine whether the reason for the viral effect is customer advocacy (e.g., via "word of mouth") versus network-identified homophily?Information Systems Working Papers Serie