Mining social network data for personalisation and privacy concerns: A case study of Facebook’s Beacon

This is the post-print version of the final published paper that is available from the link below.The popular success of online social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook is a hugely tempting resource of data mining for businesses engaged in personalised marketing. The use of personal information, willingly shared between online friends' networks intuitively appears to be a natural extension of current advertising strategies such as word-of-mouth and viral marketing. However, the use of SNS data for personalised marketing has provoked outrage amongst SNS users and radically highlighted the issue of privacy concern. This paper inverts the traditional approach to personalisation by conceptualising the limits of data mining in social networks using privacy concern as the guide. A qualitative investigation of 95 blogs containing 568 comments was collected during the failed launch of Beacon, a third party marketing initiative by Facebook. Thematic analysis resulted in the development of taxonomy of privacy concerns which offers a concrete means for online businesses to better understand SNS business landscape - especially with regard to the limits of the use and acceptance of personalised marketing in social networks

Gap Analysis Report

Julkaistu versi

The last five years of Big Data Research in Economics, Econometrics and Finance: Identification and conceptual analysis

Today, the Big Data term has a multidimensional approach where five main characteristics stand out: volume, velocity, veracity, value and variety. It has changed from being an emerging theme to a growing research area. In this respect, this study analyses the literature on Big Data in the Economics, Econometrics and Finance field. To do that, 1.034 publications from 2015 to 2019 were evaluated using SciMAT as a bibliometric and network analysis software. SciMAT offers a complete approach of the field and evaluates the most cited and productive authors, countries and subject areas related to Big Data. Lastly, a science map is performed to understand the intellectual structure and the main research lines (themes)

Corporate Influence in the Post-2015 Process

This working paper examines the role and influence of business actors in the process towards the Post-2015 agenda of the UN, with particular attention to the influence of large transnational corporations. The business sector certainly has an important role to play in the implementation process of the Post-2015 agenda, as sustainable development will require large-scale changes in business practices. Some pioneering companies are already on the path towards sustainable development solutions (for instance in the area of renewable energies). However, acknowledging corporations' role must not mean giving them undue influence on policymaking and ignoring their responsibility in creating and exacerbating many of the problems that the Post-2015 agenda is supposed to tackle.This working paper starts with a brief overview of the current process towards the Post-2015 agenda and assesses its political relevance. The second part maps out the key business players involved in various processes surrounding the post-2015 consultations. The third part of the paper analyzes the key messages and policy recommendations of business actors in the post-2015 process. The fourth part explores the problems, risks and side-effects of the corporate influence on the Post-2015 agenda. They relate, on the one hand, to the key messages, on the other hand to the promoted governance models. The final part draws some conclusions, provides policy recommendations for the UN, member states, civil society and academia, and highlights potential paths for future research and policy work

Narratives of loss and order and imaging the Belgian landscape 1900-1945

In their article "Narratives of Loss and Order and Imaging the Belgian Landscape 1900-1945" Bruno Notteboom and David Peleman analyze a number of publications on landscape, focusing on narratives constructed by means of landscape images published in Belgium. With the work of Jean Massart and Emile Vanderwelde as a point of departure, Notteboom and Peleman discuss popularizing publications in the fields of botany, agricultural education, and tourism, as well as an urban planning. They address the three realms of landscape narratives defined by Matthew Potteiger and Jamie Purinton as story, context/intertext, and discourse. Notteboom and Peleman distinguish three recurrent operations or narrative techniques: framing, sequencing, and juxtaposing whereby their main argument is that in spite of their ideological differences the publications they discuss seek a way of dealing with processes of modernization and with the loss of a traditional way of living defined by a direct relation with the land