A Storm in an IoT Cup: The Emergence of Cyber-Physical Social Machines

The concept of social machines is increasingly being used to characterise various socio-cognitive spaces on the Web. Social machines are human collectives using networked digital technology which initiate real-world processes and activities including human communication, interactions and knowledge creation. As such, they continuously emerge and fade on the Web. The relationship between humans and machines is made more complex by the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and devices. The scale, automation, continuous sensing, and actuation capabilities of these devices add an extra dimension to the relationship between humans and machines making it difficult to understand their evolution at either the systemic or the conceptual level. This article describes these new socio-technical systems, which we term Cyber-Physical Social Machines, through different exemplars, and considers the associated challenges of security and privacy.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure

Building Social Media Observatories for Monitoring Online Opinion Dynamics

Social media house a trove of relevant information for the study of online opinion dynamics. However, harvesting and analyzing the sheer overload of data that is produced by these media poses immense challenges to journalists, researchers, activists, policy makers, and concerned citizens. To mitigate this situation, this article discusses the creation of (social) media observatories: platforms that enable users to capture the complexities of social behavior, in particular the alignment and misalignment of opinions, through computational analyses of digital media data. The article positions the concept of "observatories" for social media monitoring among ongoing methodological developments in the computational social sciences and humanities and proceeds to discuss the technological innovations and design choices behind social media observatories currently under development for the study of opinions related to cultural and societal issues in European spaces. Notable attention is devoted to the construction of Penelope: an open, web-services-based infrastructure that allows different user groups to consult and contribute digital tools and observatories that suit their analytical needs. The potential and the limitations of this approach are discussed on the basis of a climate change opinion observatory that implements text analysis tools to study opinion dynamics concerning themes such as global warming. Throughout, the article explicitly acknowledges and addresses potential risks of the machine-guided and human-incentivized study of opinion dynamics. Concluding remarks are devoted to a synthesis of the ethical and epistemological implications of the exercise of positioning observatories in contemporary information spaces and to an examination of future pathways for the development of social media observatories

Exploiting multimedia in creating and analysing multimedia Web archives

The data contained on the web and the social web are inherently multimedia and consist of a mixture of textual, visual and audio modalities. Community memories embodied on the web and social web contain a rich mixture of data from these modalities. In many ways, the web is the greatest resource ever created by human-kind. However, due to the dynamic and distributed nature of the web, its content changes, appears and disappears on a daily basis. Web archiving provides a way of capturing snapshots of (parts of) the web for preservation and future analysis. This paper provides an overview of techniques we have developed within the context of the EU funded ARCOMEM (ARchiving COmmunity MEMories) project to allow multimedia web content to be leveraged during the archival process and for post-archival analysis. Through a set of use cases, we explore several practical applications of multimedia analytics within the realm of web archiving, web archive analysis and multimedia data on the web in general

Corporate e-communication: its relationship with the corporate logo in the construction of digital interaction platforms

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to examine the influence of the corporate logo on the consumer’s attitude within corporate e-communication. Design/methodology/approach – This research designed a model and a number of hypotheses, based on previous studies on corporate logo, its antecedents on e-communication, corporate image and corporate reputation. Online survey was conducted consumers and followers of the shopping social networking platforms (Facebook and Twitter) in from Colombia. Findings – Taking into account previous corporate constructs theories, the author proposes a new conceptual framework to explain how corporate e-communication interacts within an organisation’s structure, and also to show that the consumer’s interaction in corporate e-communication platforms is based on the corporate logo perception held by consumers; as a consequence, the corporate reputation is affected. Originality/value – This study contributes on the understanding and expansion of the organisation’s structure by introducing a new corporate construct, named ‘corporate e-communication’, defined as the digital interaction than an organisation has with its stakeholders, it involves everything it says, shows and does. However, there are a few other areas of concern with regard to consequences related to corporate image and corporate reputation, particularly in Colombian retail setting

Corporate e-communication: its relationship with the corporate logo in the construction of digital interaction platforms

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to examine the influence of the corporate logo on the consumer’s attitude within corporate e-communication. Design/methodology/approach – This research designed a model and a number of hypotheses, based on previous studies on corporate logo, its antecedents on e-communication, corporate image and corporate reputation. Online survey was conducted consumers and followers of the shopping social networking platforms (Facebook and Twitter) in from Colombia. Findings – Taking into account previous corporate constructs theories, the author proposes a new conceptual framework to explain how corporate e-communication interacts within an organisation’s structure, and also to show that the consumer’s interaction in corporate e-communication platforms is based on the corporate logo perception held by consumers; as a consequence, the corporate reputation is affected. Originality/value – This study contributes on the understanding and expansion of the organisation’s structure by introducing a new corporate construct, named ‘corporate e-communication’, defined as the digital interaction than an organisation has with its stakeholders, it involves everything it says, shows and does. However, there are a few other areas of concern with regard to consequences related to corporate image and corporate reputation, particularly in Colombian retail setting

Databases and Information Systems in the AI Era: Contributions from ADBIS, TPDL and EDA 2020 Workshops and Doctoral Consortium

Research on database and information technologies has been rapidly evolving over the last couple of years. This evolution was lead by three major forces: Big Data, AI and Connected World that open the door to innovative research directions and challenges, yet exploiting four main areas: (i) computational and storage resource modeling and organization; (ii) new programming models, (iii) processing power and (iv) new applications that emerge related to health, environment, education, Cultural Heritage, Banking, etc. The 24th East-European Conference on Advances in Databases and Information Systems (ADBIS 2020), the 24th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL 2020) and the 16th Workshop on Business Intelligence and Big Data (EDA 2020), held during August 25–27, 2020, at Lyon, France, and associated satellite events aimed at covering some emerging issues related to database and information system research in these areas. The aim of this paper is to present such events, their motivations, and topics of interest, as well as briefly outline the papers selected for presentations. The selected papers will then be included in the remainder of this volume

Web 2.0 and micro-businesses: An exploratory investigation

This is the author's final version of the article. This article is (c) Emerald Group Publishing and permission has been granted for this version to appear here. Emerald does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited.This article was chosen as a Highly Commended Award Winner at the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2013.Purpose – The paper aims to report on an exploratory study into how small businesses use Web 2.0 information and communication technologies (ICT) to work collaboratively with other small businesses. The study had two aims: to investigate the benefits available from the use of Web 2.0 in small business collaborations, and to characterize the different types of such online collaborations. Design/methodology/approach – The research uses a qualitative case study methodology based on semi-structured interviews with the owner-managers of 12 UK-based small companies in the business services sector who are early adopters of Web 2.0 technologies. Findings – Benefits from the use of Web 2.0 are categorized as lifestyle benefits, internal operational efficiency, enhanced capability, external communications and enhanced service offerings. A 2×2 framework is developed to categorize small business collaborations using the dimensions of the basis for inter-organizational collaboration (control vs cooperation) and the level of Web 2.0 ICT use (simple vs sophisticated). Research limitations/implications – A small number of firms of similar size, sector and location were studied, which limits generalizability. Nonetheless, the results offer a pointer to the likely future use of Web 2.0 tools by other small businesses. Practical implications – The research provides evidence of the attraction and potential of Web 2.0 for collaborations between small businesses. Originality/value – The paper is one of the first to report on use of Web 2.0 ICT in collaborative working between small businesses. It will be of interest to those seeking a better understanding of the potential of Web 2.0 in the small business community.WestFocu