Glu: An Online Type 1 Diabetes Information Community

This research paper examines the online health community Glu (MyGlu.org), a type 1 diabetes social media site. Type 1 diabetes is a chronic medical condition that requires constant and specialized medical attention. Online health communities like Glu, are an important part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle for many of its members. This study discusses the composition of this information community, the motivations of its members, and the benefits members gain through their participation. It describes the major characteristics of the community and focuses on the information needs of type 1 diabetics. It concludes with reflections on how libraries and LIS professionals can better serve the information needs of health communities like Glu and accommodate their needs in the physical space of the library

Search delegation, synthesists and expertise on social media

Background. Social media often adds a layer of intermediation between sources and information consumer, with users outsourcing some of the information work to others. Social media “synthesists” have been identified as a group of volunteer information providers fulfilling this role.Approach. Through a review of evidence from philosophy, information science and knowledge management, this paper explores the implications of cognitive outsourcing, presents quality standards for synthesis and asks how well synthesists meet these. In the process, the role of intermediary is discussed, along with the non-specialist status of the synthesist.Results. Findings show that social media synthesists fulfil a useful role and that their importance in terms of knowledge translation is clear. While their synthesis quality may fall far short of LIS standards, there are a number of ways that some quality issues can be addressed, including the involvement of the information profession itself on the same social platforms.Contribution. Through a comparison of synthesis best practice with current informal information behaviour on social media, the paper draws attention to quality issues and new opportunities to address them. This represents an attempt to identify ways to bridge formal and emerging, informal information markets

Knowledge fixation and accretion: Longitudinal analysis of a social question-answering site

© 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate longitudinal features of an established social question-answering (Q&A) site to study how question-answer resources and other community features change over time. Design/methodology/approach – Statistical analysis and visualisation was performed on the full data dump from the Stack Overflow social Q&A site for programmers. Findings – The timing of answers is as strong a predictor of acceptance – a proxy for user satisfaction – as the structural features of provided answers sometimes associated with quality. While many questions and answer exchanges are short-lived, there is a small yet interesting subset of questions where new answers receive community approval and which may end up being ranked more highly than early answers. Research limitations/implications – As a large-scale data oriented research study, this work says little about user motivations to find and contribute new knowledge to old questions or about the impact of the resource on the consumer. This will require complementary studies using qualitative and evaluative methods. Practical implications –While content contribution to social question-asking is largely undertaken within a very short time frame, content consumption is usually over far longer periods. Methods and incentives by which content can be updated and maintained need to be considered. This work should be of interest to knowledge exchange community designers and managers. Originality/value – Few studies have looked at temporal patterns in social Q&A and how time and the moderation and voting systems employed may shape resource quality

Link Prediction in Social Networks Using Markov Random Field

Link prediction is an important task for social networks analysis, which also has applications in other domains such as information retrieval, recommender systems and e-commerce. The task is related to predicting the probable connection between two nodes in the netwok. These links are subjected to loss because of the improper creation or the lack of reflection of links in the networks; so it`s possible to develop or complete these networks and recycle the lost items and information through link prediction. In order to discover and predict these links we need the information of the nodes in the network. The information are usually extracted from the network`s graph and utilized as factors for recognition. There exist a variety of techniques for link prediction, amongst them, the most practical and current one is supervised learning based approach. In this approach, the link prediction is considered as binary classifier that each pair of nodes can be 0 or 1. The value of 0 indicates no connection between nodes and 1 means that there is a connection between them. In this research, while studying probabilistic graphical models, we use Markov random field (MRF) for link prediction problem in social networks. Experimentl results on Flicker dataset showed the proposed method was better than previous methods in precision and recall

STUDI KOMPARATIF IDENTITAS NASIONAL PADA REMAJA GENERASI Z DITINJAU DARI INTENSITAS PENGGUNAAN INTERNET

AbstractInvolving 155 respondents from private senior high school students, the present research aimed to compare national identity among adolescences of Z generation through frequency of using internet. National identity is measured with National Identity Scale developed by Lili and Diehl (1999), whereas frequency of using internet is measured by Internet Addiction Scale developed by Young (2000). One-way ANOVA test revealed that there issignificance value of these variables (p < 0.05; F = 181.09) that those who had less time in using internet tend to have higher national identity. The result have implication in several aspects including strategy of monitoring internet content to adolescences. We also provide any suggestions in implementing internet-based education and parenting in stengtheningadolescences national identity.Keywords: frequency of using internet, national Identity, Z generationAbstrakPenelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui apakah terdapat perbedaan identitas nasional di kalangan remaja Generasi Z ditinjau dari intensitas penggunaan internet. Penelitian ini melibatkan 155 siswa dari sebuah SMA Swasta di Tulungagung. Alat ukur untuk penelitian ini menggunakan Skala Identitas Nasional yang dikembangkan oleh Lili dan Diehl (1999) dan Skala Adiksi Internet yang dikembangkan oleh Young (2009). Hasil uji ANOVA satujalur menunjukkan bahwa terdapat nilai yang signifikan pada kedua variabel (P < 0.05; F = 181.09). Hasil perbandingan rerata antar-kelompok juga menunjukkan bahwa kelompok yang tidak mengalami adiksi internet cenderung memiliki identitas nasional yang lebih kuat. Hasil penelitian ini memiliki beberapa implikasi praktis, diantaranya tentang urgensi memonitor jenis konten yang diakses oleh remaja. Selain itu, peneliti juga memberikanbeberapa rekomendasi untuk menerapkan pola asuh dan strategi pembelajaran yang terintegrasi dengan internet untuk memperkuat identitas nasional pada remaja.Kata Kunci: generasi Z, identitas nasional, intensitas penggunaan interne

Generating Value from Open Government Data

A driving force for change in society is the trend towards Open Government Data (OGD). While the value generated by OGD has been widely discussed by public bodies and other stakeholders, little attention has been paid to this phenomenon in the academic literature. Hence, we developed a conceptual model portraying how data as a resource can be transformed to value. We show the causal relationships between four contextual, enabling factors, four types of value generation mechanisms and value. We use empirical data from 61 countries to test these relationships, using the PLS method. The results mostly support the hypothesized relationships. Our conclusion is that if openness is complemented with resource governance, capabilities in society and technical connectivity, use of OGD will stimulate the generation of economic and social value through four different archetypical mechanisms: Efficiency, Innovation, Transparency and Participation

Insights from students' writing of literature review via online writing clinic with e-tutors on google docs

Previous studies have lent credence to the fact that wiki has been widely used as a platform for teaching and learning. Google Docs is considered to be a distinguished platform because it enables both synchronous and asynchronous modes of communication as well as offline usage. Given the various benefits offered by Google Docs, the present study aims at: i) examining the e-tutors’ pedagogical practices in tutoring students writing the literature review via Google Docs; ii) clarifying the e-tutors’ prominent evaluation criteria in tutoring students writing literature review via Google Docs; and iii) determining the effects of e-tutoring via Google Docs. The participants of the study consists of three e-tutors and four students. In employing qualitative approach, the data collection methods of the study comprise virtual observation, documents such as writing draft and students’ journal entries as well as interview with both the students and e-tutors. Content analysis was employed when analyzing the data. Findings emanated from the study revealed that the e-tutors had engaged in some pedagogical practices such as frequent use of direct feedback, playing a dominant role, pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of the students, and providing metalinguistic feedback. Besides, the e-tutors also adhered to some prominent evaluation criteria, namely: i) expansion of pertinent subject matter, ii) inclusion of citation, iii) coherence and cohesion, iv) language usage, as well as v) organization. Apart from that, the effects of e-tutoring via Google Docs on students’ writing encompass awareness on the gravity of plagiarism, emulating expert writers’ writing practice, acknowledging the importance of planning prior to writing, revising their own work, addressing the significance of coherence, properly organizing ideas/points and performing wide readings. From the findings, it is implied that the e-tutors had taken into account some factors when tutoring the students. The factors include audience factor, task factor, and objectives of the task. Moreover, the e-tutors’ adherence to certain prominent evaluation criteria highlights the salient features that constitute a good quality of literature review. Thus, the features should be considered when evaluating novice student writers’ literature review. A working framework for online writing clinic is derived from the findings

Social epistemology and online knowledge exchange

This document summarises the submitted research which has investigated online knowledge exchange and related it to the philosophical field of social epistemology. The broad aims have been: firstly to investigate what social epistemology theory can offer in the way of guidance and evaluative frameworks for the design of knowledge systems; and secondly, to determine what the empirical study of knowledge exchange platforms can tell us about epistemology as emerging from online practice. The submitted work consists of six papers that are a mixture of review/position papers and reports of empirical investigation. These have been published in information science journals and conference proceedings. However, following the established tradition of information science, the work is positioned as being cross disciplinary in ambition.After introducing the submitted papers and the inspiration for the research, the main theoretical positions of the research are outlined and justified. These were a naturalised social epistemological position, inspired by Alvin Goldman, but widened to a situated and systems-oriented view. The naturalised view of epistemology allows for consideration of evidence from psychology, and here some key theories in social and cognitive psychology are outlined. Finally, as the subject is human-computer-human interaction, the sociotechnical setting is established. Further, the main platforms of study in the empirical work — social question answering systems — are introduced and described.The main methodology and research approaches followed are presented next. A mixed methods philosophy was deemed suitable for this area of research and — alongside the review work — the broad web science method of combining network and data investigation with qualitative methods is justified. Review work included early collaborations with an information scientist and a philosopher which helped to bring together and clarify epistemological and sociotechnical themes. The discussion section presents some of the main themes and conclusions of the submitted work, including: 1) The identification of knowledge patterns and practices online; 2) Criteria for online knowledge exchange distilled from the social epistemology literature; 3) Some triangulations where theory from philosophy and psychology seemed to corroborate and serve to explain online behaviour; 4) Socio-temporal aspects to online knowledge exchange that are perhaps under developed in philosophy but apparent in practice; 5) Credibility cues and bias, seen as crucial to a rounded study of user interaction with online sources; and finally 6) Interventions suggested by the research which would aim to raise the quality and effectiveness of social media knowledge systems.Finally, conclusions and suggestions for further work are presented. These follow on from the submitted strands of research and present possibilities for how the work may be extended and improved upon. In common with the research, these combine philosophy, modelling, interaction design and qualitative methods. Such a combination is seen as essential to developing an enhanced understanding of how the web serves and could serve as a platform for human knowledge