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

Reading the Source Code of Social Ties

Though online social network research has exploded during the past years, not much thought has been given to the exploration of the nature of social links. Online interactions have been interpreted as indicative of one social process or another (e.g., status exchange or trust), often with little systematic justification regarding the relation between observed data and theoretical concept. Our research aims to breach this gap in computational social science by proposing an unsupervised, parameter-free method to discover, with high accuracy, the fundamental domains of interaction occurring in social networks. By applying this method on two online datasets different by scope and type of interaction (aNobii and Flickr) we observe the spontaneous emergence of three domains of interaction representing the exchange of status, knowledge and social support. By finding significant relations between the domains of interaction and classic social network analysis issues (e.g., tie strength, dyadic interaction over time) we show how the network of interactions induced by the extracted domains can be used as a starting point for more nuanced analysis of online social data that may one day incorporate the normative grammar of social interaction. Our methods finds applications in online social media services ranging from recommendation to visual link summarization.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, Proceedings of the 2014 ACM conference on Web (WebSci'14

Realizing a social ecosystem of web services

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014. All rights are reserved. The success in Web services goes well beyond the building of loosely-coupled, interoperable software components. Nowadays, large-scale collaboration through social media (e.g., social networks) and new generation of serviceoriented software have spurred the growth of Web service ecosystems. This chapter discusses how a social ecosystem of Web services can be realized by defining first, the necessary actors that take part in this ecosystem formation and second, the interactions that occur between these actors during this ecosystem management. Such ecosystem permits to track who does what and where and when it is done. Compared to (regular) Web services, Web services in a social ecosystem take different actions that allow them, for instance to establish and maintain networks of contacts with other peers and to form with some peers strong and long lasting collaborative groups. The actors in the ecosystem are referred to as providers of Web services, providers of social networks of Web services, consumers of Web services, and providers of social networks of consumers. They all engage in different types of interactions like making Web services sign up in social networks of Web services, supporting users seek advices from existing members in a social network of consumers, and combining social networks of consumers and of Web services to achieve users\u27 requests. Existing research initiatives on social Web services as well as open issues in the development of a social ecosystem of (social) Web services are also discussed in this chapter

Komplex hálózatok vizsgálata statisztikus fizikai módszerekkel = Analysis of complex networks with statistical physics methods

Hálózati csoportosulásokat (klasztereket, modulokat) kereső módszer segítségével átfedő, sűrű csoportokat találtunk molekuláris biológiai (fehérje-fehérje kölcsönhatások, transzkripció reguláció), kognitív (szó-asszociációs) és szociális (társszerzőségi) hálózatokban. A hálózati modulkeresővel megtalált átfedő csoportosulásokat a hálózati csúcspontokról rendelkezésre álló információk (pl. a fehérjék funkciója) alapján statisztikai tesztekkel ellenőriztük. A modulok segítségével fehérje-fehérje kölcsönhatási hálózatokban megjósoltuk korábban ismeretlen funkciójú fehérjék funkcióját és jósoltunk fehérje csoportokat, amelyek valószínűleg eddig ismeretlen speciális biológiai feladatok elvégzésén együttműködnek. Az átfedő modulkereső módszer irányított és súlyozott hálózatokra való kiterjesztésével azonosítottuk az irányított hálózatok két fő típusát (az átfedések irányába illetve azokból kifelé mutató modulok esete) és lehetővé tettük a súlyozott hálózatokban történő pontosabb modulkeresést. | With a network module search technique, we identified overlapping modules (also called: clusters, communities) of nodes in complex networks from molecular biology (protein-protein interactions and transcription regulation), cognitive science (word association web) and social science (co-authorship web). We verified the identified overlapping network modules by using additional information available about the nodes (e.g., the annotations of proteins) and performing statistical tests. Based on the modules in protein-protein interaction networks we predicted functions for proteins with no known functions so far and also pointed out groups of proteins that are likely to collaborate on specific biological tasks that are not yet known. By extending the overlapping network module search method to directed and weighted graphs, we have uncovered two major types of overlapping directed modular structure (modules pointing towards the overlaps and modules pointing outwards) and have enabled a more precise module search in weighted networks

Perspectives and possibilities: Electronic interactivity and social constructivist teaching in a science, mathematics and technology teacher education program

Social constructivist perspectives on learning emphasise the cognitive and social activity of learners in co-constructing their knowledge. An introductory postgraduate unit offered by Curtin University’s Science and Mathematics Education Centre, and intended for the professional development of practicing teachers, was designed in accordance with the referent of social constructivism. In collaboration with Curtin’s Teaching Learning Group, Web-based modes of communication, including e-mail and a Discussion Room, were introduced to supplement existing ‘paper and mail’ distance education materials in order to facilitate richer student-tutor and student-student social interactions. We felt that such interactions had significant potential to support the desired learning activities and outcomes of the unit: critical self-reflection on participants’ classroom practices and professional beliefs. The participants were surveyed before, during and after the unit, and two were selected for case study analysis. The results indicate that the Web-based components of the unit (a) made participants’ study of the unit more enjoyable, (b) increased their feeling of being part of a community of learners, and (c) supported them in conducting rich, thoughtful reviews of both their teaching and their learning. We also identified a number of factors that can constrain distance learners’ access to, and educational use of, electronic communications

Agent-based models of social behaviour and communication in evacuations: A systematic review

Most modern agent-based evacuation models involve interactions between evacuees. However, the assumed reasons for interactions and portrayal of them may be overly simple. Research from social psychology suggests that people interact and communicate with one another when evacuating and evacuee response is impacted by the way information is communicated. Thus, we conducted a systematic review of agent-based evacuation models to identify 1) how social interactions and communication approaches between agents are simulated, and 2) what key variables related to evacuation are addressed in these models. We searched Web of Science and ScienceDirect to identify articles that simulated information exchange between agents during evacuations, and social behaviour during evacuations. From the final 70 included articles, we categorised eight types of social interaction that increased in social complexity from collision avoidance to social influence based on strength of social connections with other agents. In the 17 models which simulated communication, we categorised four ways that agents communicate information: spatially through information trails or radii around agents, via social networks and via external communication. Finally, the variables either manipulated or measured in the models were categorised into the following groups: environmental condition, personal attributes of the agents, procedure, and source of information. We discuss promising directions for agent-based evacuation models to capture the effects of communication and group dynamics on evacuee behaviour. Moreover, we demonstrate how communication and group dynamics may impact the variables commonly used in agent-based evacuation models.Comment: Pre-print submitted to Safety Science special issue following the 2023 Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics conferenc