Exploratory Analysis of Pairwise Interactions in Online Social Networks

In the last few decades sociologists were trying to explain human behaviour by analysing social networks, which requires access to data about interpersonal relationships. This represented a big obstacle in this research field until the emergence of online social networks (OSNs), which vastly facilitated the process of collecting such data. Nowadays, by crawling public profiles on OSNs, it is possible to build a social graph where "friends" on OSN become represented as connected nodes. OSN connection does not necessarily indicate a close real-life relationship, but using OSN interaction records may reveal real-life relationship intensities, a topic which inspired a number of recent researches. Still, published research currently lacks an extensive exploratory analysis of OSN interaction records, i.e. a comprehensive overview of users' interaction via different ways of OSN interaction. In this paper we provide such an overview by leveraging results of conducted extensive social experiment which managed to collect records for over 3,200 Facebook users interacting with over 1,400,000 of their friends. Our exploratory analysis focuses on extracting population distributions and correlation parameters for 13 interaction parameters, providing valuable insight in online social network interaction for future researches aimed at this field of study.Comment: Journal Article published 2 Oct 2017 in Automatika volume 58 issue 4 on pages 422 to 42

Social Knowledge Environments

Knowledge management represents a key issue for both information systems’ academics and practitioners, including those who have become disillusioned by actual results that fail to deliver on exaggerated promises and idealistic visions. Social software, a tremendous global success story, has prompted similarly high expectations regarding the ways in which organizations can improve their knowledge handling. But can these expectations be met, whether in academic research or the real world? This article seeks to identify current research trends and gaps, with a focus on social knowledge environments. The proposed research agenda features four focal challenges: semi-permeable organizations, social software in professional work settings, crowd knowledge, and crossborder knowledge management. Three solutions emerge as likely methods to address these challenges: designoriented solutions, analytical solutions, and interdisciplinary dialogue

The implementation of information strategies to support sustainable procurement

In our research context, sustainable procurement can be seen as a process to reduce damage to the environment by integrating certain aspects into making procurement decisions, such as value for money throughout the whole life cycle and being of benefit to society and the economy. This research has found more than one way of interpreting the ‘sustainable system’, for example, ‘green-friendly’ versus remaining effective in the long term. Sustainable procurement requires specific information to support the procurement process. The study reported in this thesis aimed to investigate the type of information needed in order for organisations to make correct sustainable procurement decisions. From these findings, information architecture for sustainable procurement in UK universities has been derived. While the initial focus has been on the information needed to make informed decisions in purchasing sustainable information technology (IT) equipment, it is believed that the framework would also be more widely applicable to other types of purchases. To ensure that these findings would support the university aspiration in terms of sustainability practices, a goal-context modelling technique called VMOST/B-SCP was chosen to analyse the sustainable procurement strategy in order to evaluate the alignment of IT strategy and its business strategy. A goal-context model using VMOST/B-SCP was produced to evaluate the procurement strategy, with this validated by procurement staff. This research helps to improve the way that goals and context are identified by integrating another technique, namely, social network analysis (SNA) to produce actor network diagrams. The VMOST/B-SCP technique is transferrable to the mapping of action strategies. The findings from goal-context modelling show that a goal-context model is not static: it changes as external circumstances and organisational priorities change. Most changes to the strategy occurred where external entities on which the change programme depended did not act as planned. The actor networks produced in our version of VMOST/B-SCP can be used to identify such risks. This research was pioneering in its use of VMOST/B-SCP in examining a business change while it was actually taking place rather than after it had been completed (and thus needed to accommodate changes in objectives and strategies). In addition, the research analysed a system with some IT support but where human-operated procedures predominated. The original B-SCP framework used Jackson’s problem frames which focus on possible software components: in our scenario, SNA-inspired actor diagrams were found to be more appropriate

Essays on enterprise social media: moderation, shop floor integration and information system induced organizational change

The digital transformation increases the pressure on innovation capabilities and challenges organizations to adapt their business models. In order to cope with the increased competitiveness, organizations face two significant internal challenges: Enabling internal digital collaboration and knowledge sharing as well as information system-induced change. This dissertation will investigate seven related research questions divided in two main parts. The first part focuses on how an organization can foster digital knowledge exchanges and collaboration in global organizations. Enterprise social media has attracted the attention of organizations as a technology for social collaboration and knowledge sharing. The dissertation will investigate how organizations can moderate the employee discourse in such platforms from a novel organizational perspective and provide insights on how to increase the encouragement for employees to contribute and assure content quality. The developed framework will provide detailed moderation approaches. In addition, the risk of privacy concerns associated with organizational interference in the new digital collaboration technologies are evaluated. The second part of the dissertation shifts the focus to the shop floor environment, an area that has faced substantial digital advancements. Those advancements change the organizational role of the shop floor to a more knowledge work-oriented environment. Firstly, a state of research regarding technology acceptance and professional diversity is presented to create an enterprise social media job-characteristic framework. Further, a unique and longitudinal shop floor case study is investigated to derive organizational challenges for enterprise social media and potentials for empowerment. To validate the future shop floor environment needs use cases for the shop floor are derived and a user profile is established. The case study is extended by expert interviews to focus on conceptualizing organizational information systems-induced change. In this regard, the role of work practices, organizational and employee mindset and information system change are integrated into a holistic organizational change model that targets employee empowerment. This dissertation provides a comprehensive overview of enterprise social media from an organizational management and shop floor perspective. It contributes to understanding new digital needs at the shop floor and the information systems-induced change journey towards digital employee empowerment

An Empirical Investigation of Using Models During Requirements Engineering in the Automotive Industry

Context:The automotive industry is undergoing a major transformation from a manufacturing industry towards an industry that relies heavily on software. As one of the main factors for project success, requirements engineering (RE) plays a major role in this transition. Similar to other areas of automotive engineering, the use of models during RE has been suggested to increase productivity and tackle increasing complexity by means of abstraction. Existing modelling frameworks often prescribe a variety of different, formal models for RE, trying to maximise the benefit obtained from model-based engineering (MBE). However, these frameworks are typically based on assumptions from anecdotal evidence and experience, without empirical data supporting these assumptions.Objective:The overall aim of our research is to investigate the potential benefits and drawbacks of using model-based RE in an automotive environment based on empirical evidence. To do so, we present an investigation of the current industrial practice of MBE in the automotive industry, existing challenges in automotive RE, and potential use cases for model-based RE. Furthermore, we explore two use cases for model-based RE, namely the creation of behavioural requirements models for validation and verification purposes and the use of existing trace models to support communication.Method:We address the aims of this thesis using three empirical strategies: case study, design science and survey. We collected quantitative and qualitative data using interviews as well as questionnaires.Results:Our results show that using models during automotive RE can be beneficial, if restricted to certain aspects of RE. In particular, models supporting communication and stakeholder interaction are promising. We show that the use of abstract models of behavioural requirements are considered beneficial for system testing purposes, even though they abstract from the detailed functional requirements. Furthermore, we demonstrate that existing data can be understood as a model to uncover dependencies between stakeholders. Conclusions:Our results question the feasibility to construct and maintain large amounts of formal models for RE. Instead, models during RE should be used for a few, important use cases. Additionally, MBE can be used as a means to understand existing problems in software engineering

Internal communications through new media - A narrative study of a company's first steps

Uudet mediat sisäisessä viestinnässä - Narratiivinen tutkimus erään yrityksen ensimmäisistä askelista Tutkimuksen tavoitteet Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena oli ymmärtää mitä mahdollisuuksia uudet mediat tuovat yritysten sisäiseen viestintään, sekä sitä miten nämä mahdollisuudet saadaan käyttöön. Päähuomio ei ollut uusien medioiden teknologisissa näkökulmissa, vaan sen ymmärtämisessä millaisen viestinnän ja diskurssin uudet mediat mahdollistavat organisaation sisällä ja mitä niiden menestyksekäs käyttö vaatii. Lisäksi tutkimus pyrki tunnistamaan erilaisia uusien medioiden käyttäjätyyppejä. Tutkimus oli luonteeltaan laadullinen ja se tutki uusien medioiden ilmiötä 'Bedaksi' kutsutun case-yrityksen sisäisen verkoston kautta. Beda on kansainvälisesti toimiva teknologia-alan yritys. BedaNet on yrityksen kaikille esimiehille suunnattu sisäinen verkosto. Tutkimusmenetelmät ja teoreettinen viitekehys Tutkimuksen teoreettinen viitekehyksen lähtökohtana oli aiempi kirjallisuus sisäisestä viestinnästä, muutoksen viestinnästä ja mediatutkimuksesta. Tutkimuksen aineisto kerättiin seitsemän teemahaastattelun, sekä case-yrityksen esimiehille suunnatun kyselyn avulla. Aineisto analysointiin narratiivisia menetelmiä käyttäen. Tutkimuksen tulokset ja johtopäätökset Tutkimuksen tulokset on esitetty neljän narratiivin muodossa, jotka kuvaavat BedaNetin käyttöönottoa case-yrityksessä johdon ja kolmen käyttäjätyypin näkemysten kautta. Tutkimus tunnisti kolme käyttäjätyyppiä: Aktiivisen osallistujan, Hiljaisen seuraajan ja Poissaolevan tekijän. Tutkimus osoitti useita mahdollisuuksia joita uudet mediat tuovat sisäiseen viestintään. Tutkimus myös tunnisti kriittisiä tekijöitä, jotka helpottavat tai vastaavasti hankaloittavat uusien medioiden tuloksekasta käyttöä. Loppuyhteenvetona tämä tutkimus esittää, että uudet mediat tuovat useita hyötyjä yrityksen sisäiseen viestintään, jotka vastaavat tulevaisuuden työelämän tarpeisiin. Kuitenkin, uusien medioiden menestyksekäs toimeenpano yrityksessä edellyttää suunnitelmallisuutta ja tietoisuutta kriittisistä tekijöistä. Tämä tutkimus tunnisti kriittisinä tekijöinä tarpeen uudenlaisille kommunikaatiotaidoille uusissa medioissa kommunikoimiseksi, sekä sisäisiin uusiin medioihin liittyvän jännitteen ammatillisen ja henkilökohtaisen läheisyyden välillä. Avainsanat: uudet mediat, sosiaalinen media, sosiaaliset verkostot, ESN, sisäinen viestintä, muutosviestintä, Web 2.

Enabling efficient graph computing with near-data processing techniques

With the emergence of data science, graph computing is becoming a crucial tool for processing big connected data. However, when mapped to modern computing systems, graph computing typically suffers from poor performance because of inefficiencies in memory subsystems. At the same time, emerging technologies, such as Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC), enable processing-in-memory (PIM) functionality, a promising technique of near-data processing (NDP), by integrating compute units in the 3D-stacked logic layer. The PIM units allows operation offloading at an instruction level, which has considerable potential to overcome the performance bottleneck of graph computing. Nevertheless, studies have not fully explored this functionality for graph workloads or identified its applications and shortcomings. The main objective of this dissertation is to enable NDP techniques for efficient graph computing. Specifically, it investigates the PIM offloading at instruction level. To achieve this goal, it presents a graph benchmark suite for understanding graph computing behaviors, and then proposes architectural techniques for PIM offloading on various host platforms. This dissertation first presents GraphBIG, a comprehensive graph benchmark suite. To cover major graph computation types and data sources, GraphBIG selects representative data representations, workloads, and datasets from 21 real-world use cases of multiple application domains. This dissertation characterized the benchmarks on real machines and observed extremely irregular memory patterns and significant diverse behaviors across various computation types. GraphBIG helps users understand the behavior of modern graph computing on hardware architectures and enables future architecture and system research for graph computing. To achieve better performance of graph computing, this dissertation proposes GraphPIM, a full-stack NDP solution for graph computing. This dissertation performs an analysis on modern graph workloads to assess the applicability of PIM offloading and presents hardware and software mechanisms to efficiently make use of the PIM functionality. Following the real-world HMC 2.0 specification, GraphPIM provides performance benefits for graph applications without any user code modification and ISA changes. In addition, GraphPIM proposes an extension to PIM operations that can further bring performance benefits for more graph applications. The evaluation results show that GraphPIM achieves up to a 2.4X speedup with a 37% reduction in energy consumption. To effectively utilize NDP systems with GPU-based host architectures that can fully utilize hundreds of gigabytes of bandwidth, this dissertation explores managing the thermal constraints of 3D-stacked memory cubes. Based on the real experiment with an HMC prototype, this study observes that the operating temperature of HMC is much higher than conventional DRAM, which can even cause thermal shutdown with a passive cooling solution. In addition, it also shows that even with a commodity-server cooling solution, HMC can fail to maintain the temperature of the memory dies within the normal operating range when in-memory processing is highly utilized, thereby resulting in higher energy consumption and performance overhead. To this end, this dissertation proposes CoolPIM, a thermal-aware source throttling mechanism that controls the intensity of PIM offloading on runtime. The proposed technique keeps the memory dies of HMC within the normal operating temperature using software-based techniques. The evaluation results show that CoolPIM achieves up to 1.4X and 1.37X speedups compared to non-offloading and naïve offloading scenarios.Ph.D

Legislation, policy and regulation in the post-telecommunication era : the role of OTT service’s (WhatsApp) consumption and sense-making in the everyday lives of black-middle class employees of Parliament of the Republic of South Africa.

Master of Art in Media and Cultural Studies. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg 2017.The world has become increasingly “hyperconnected.” Hyperconnectivity refers not only to the means of communication and interaction, but it also brings people (and things) together from anywhere and at any time. In today’s world, citizens are increasingly sharing information via the so-called Over-the Top services (OTT) and virtual reality tools, rather than from the front porch. This hyperconnectivity has given rise to a globalised “168” world (24 × 7 = 168), where the work day continues around the clock. A plausible reason for the popularity of OTTs is that people no longer want to be passive ‘spectators’; instead, they want to be interactive, co-create content, discuss, modify usergenerated content and connect with organisations. The above illustrates that media culture provides the materials to create identities into which individuals insert themselves in contemporary techno-capitalist societies, and which is producing a new form of global culture. But media culture is also a high “techno-culture”, deploying the most advanced technologies that are of value to business or professional life. This study examines how black employees in Parliament interact and make sense of the text (WhatsApp) as an OTT service. An OTT is any application or service that provides a product over the Internet and bypasses traditional distribution. Services that come over the top are most typically related to media and communication and are generally, if not always, lower in cost than the traditional method of delivery. The research analyses how and why employees use and integrate WhatsApp into their everyday lives, asks what WhatsApp means to these employees, and questions whether the use of WhatsApp is prohibited by policies of the institution or whether its usage has been ‘naturalised’. The study also looks at the key provisions of Constitution of Republic of South Africa, relevant laws and policies governing the ICT ecosystem; how the sector has evolved and is regulated and managed as well as significant policy and regulatory debates which have emerged since the introduction of OTT services