Towards User Empowerment: Bridging the Gap in Health Misinformation Protection on Social Networks

Health misinformation in social networks requires immediate attention due to its severe consequences, as exemplified by the COVID-19 pandemic response on social media. However, the existing solutions designed to combat misinformation generally overlook the unique characteristics of health misinformation domain. Through a review of relevant literature and a critical analysis of current anti-misinformation solutions, we have identified significant user-side issues that undermine the effectiveness of existing approaches in addressing health misinformation. To tackle these issues, we put forth several strategies to empower users in combating health misinformation. Our research contributes to understanding the challenges associated with health misinformation correction on social networks

Personal Data Management Systems: The security and functionality standpoint

International audienceRiding the wave of smart disclosure initiatives and new privacy-protection regulations, the Personal Cloud paradigm is emerging through a myriad of solutions offered to users to let them gather and manage their whole digital life. On the bright side, this opens the way to novel value-added services when crossing multiple sources of data of a given person or crossing the data of multiple people. Yet this paradigm shift towards user empowerment raises fundamental questions with regards to the appropriateness of the functionalities and the data management and protection techniques which are offered by existing solutions to laymen users. These questions must be answered in order to limit the risk of seeing such solutions adopted only by a handful of users and thus leaving the Personal Cloud paradigm to become no more than one of the latest missed attempts to achieve a better regulation of the management of personal data. To this end, we review, compare and analyze personal cloud alternatives in terms of the functionalities they provide and the threat models they target. From this analysis, we derive a general set of functionality and security requirements that any Personal Data Management System (PDMS) should consider. We then identify the challenges of implementing such a PDMS and propose a preliminary design for an extensive and secure PDMS reference architecture satisfying the considered requirements. Finally, we discuss several important research challenges remaining to be addressed to achieve a mature PDMS ecosystem

The Role of Complexity in Preparing for Municipal Decision-Making

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how the theories of complexity may give insight and a new perspective into the preparation of decision-making at the municipal level. Based on concepts like emergence, self-organization, far-fromchaos, connectivity and feedback processes, the paper suggests that more attention should be paid to the invisible dynamics of the preparation process. Municipalities are regarded as open and complex social systems that must ensure democracy and make effective decisions at the same time. Furthermore, municipalities should be able to analyze information and to construe the meaning of their operational environment. Among other things, officeholders and politicians should also be creative and innovative. This paper is based on a conceptual analysis done by the author. The literature of that analysis included several dissertations concerning decision-making at the local government level in Scandinavian countries, particularly in Finland . This paper is based also on other sources. This paper is descriptive and interdisciplinary in nature, and the goal is to outline a framework for future research

Exploring Links between Conversational Agent Design Challenges and Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Recent years have seen a steady rise in the popularity and use of Conversational Agents (CA) for different applications, well before the more immediate impact of large language models. This rise has been accompanied by an extensive exploration and documentation of the challenges of designing and creating conversational agents. Focusing on a recent scoping review of the socio-technical challenges of CA creation, this opinion paper calls for an examination of the extent to which interdisciplinary collaboration (IDC) challenges might contribute towards socio-technical CA design challenges. The paper proposes a taxonomy of CA design challenges using IDC as a lens, and proposes practical strategies to overcome them which complement existing design principles. The paper invites future work to empirically verify suggested conceptual links and apply the proposed strategies within the space of CA design to evaluate their effectiveness

The Value-Sensitive Conversational Agent Co-Design Framework

Conversational agents (CAs) are gaining traction in both industry and academia, especially with the advent of generative AI and large language models. As these agents are used more broadly by members of the general public and take on a number of critical use cases and social roles, it becomes important to consider the values embedded in these systems. This consideration includes answering questions such as 'whose values get embedded in these agents?' and 'how do those values manifest in the agents being designed?' Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to present the Value-Sensitive Conversational Agent (VSCA) Framework for enabling the collaborative design (co-design) of value-sensitive CAs with relevant stakeholders. Firstly, requirements for co-designing value-sensitive CAs which were identified in previous works are summarised here. Secondly, the practical framework is presented and discussed, including its operationalisation into a design toolkit. The framework facilitates the co-design of three artefacts that elicit stakeholder values and have a technical utility to CA teams to guide CA implementation, enabling the creation of value-embodied CA prototypes. Finally, an evaluation protocol for the framework is proposed where the effects of the framework and toolkit are explored in a design workshop setting to evaluate both the process followed and the outcomes produced.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figure

Agronet co-operation in 1992-1999

Maatalouden tutkimuskeskuksen ja Maaseutukeskusten liiton vuonna 1992 kahdenkeskisenä yhteistyönä aloittama Agronet-hanke on vuosien saatossa kehittynyt koko maa- ja elintarvikealan kattavaksi yhteistyöverkostoksi. Yhteistyöllä on ollut samanaikaisesti sekä tutkimuksellisia että jokapäiväiseen operatiiviseen toimintaan liittyviä tavoitteita. Yhteistyön tukena on aina käytetty viimeisimpiä tietotekniikan välineitä ja ajantasaista tietoteknistä osaamista. Sen päätarkoituksena on kuitenkin ollut tiedon tuottajien ja tiedon käyttäjien toiminnallisista tarpeista lähtevä palvelujen määritteleminen ja kehittäminen. Näin ollen yhteistyön lähtökohtana on pidetty ihmisten verkostomaisen työskentelyn tukemista tietotekniikan keinoin, ei uusien teknisten innovaatioiden tavoittelua. Yhteistyön konkreettisena ja näkyvänä tuloksena on kehitetty vuonna 1997 tavaramerkiksi rekisteröity Agronet-tietoverkko, joka on maatalous- ja elintarvikealalla pisimpään toiminut ja eniten käytetty tietoverkko. Tästä näkyvästä tuloksesta huolimatta verkostoyhteistyö on vuosien mittaan lisääntyvässä määrin muuttunut insinöörityöstä kunkin yhteistyön osapuolen omien päämäärien toteuttamiseen tähtääväksi ja aina vain enemmän ja enemmän liiketoiminnallista osaamista ja kekseliäisyyttä vaativaksi luovaksi toiminnaksi. Tämä raportti sisältää kuvauksen Agronet-yhteistyön eri vaiheista, tavoitteista ja keskeisistä tuloksista sekä vision ja strategian yhteistyön jatkamiseksi vuodesta 1999 eteenpäin.Agronet was set up in 1992 as a joint effort by the Agricultural Research Centre of Finland and the Finnish Association of Rural Advisory Services. Over the years the venture has thrived and now encompasses most of Finland s agro-industry. Underpinned by the most recent information technology and the best available technical personnel, Agronet has had both scientific and practical objectives. The main emphasis, however, has always been on the development of user-oriented practical applications and services. The thrust of co-operation has therefore been on human networking facilitated by modern information technology, not on developing technical innovations. The Agronet information network a registered trademark since 1997 is the most visible result of the collaboration and is, moreover, the oldest and most widely used agro-industry oriented information network in Finland. Despite this tangible product, the focus of Agronet has gradually shifted from engineering to activities increasing the efficiency, effectiveness and ingenuity of the business processes of the participating organisations. This booklet traces the different phases and achievements of the Agronet venture from 1992 to 1999 and looks at how the collaboration should continue.vo