CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges

Information-seeking on the Web with Trusted Social Networks - from Theory to Systems

This research investigates how synergies between the Web and social networks can enhance the process of obtaining relevant and trustworthy information. A review of literature on personalised search, social search, recommender systems, social networks and trust propagation reveals limitations of existing technology in areas such as relevance, collaboration, task-adaptivity and trust. In response to these limitations I present a Web-based approach to information-seeking using social networks. This approach takes a source-centric perspective on the information-seeking process, aiming to identify trustworthy sources of relevant information from within the user's social network. An empirical study of source-selection decisions in information- and recommendation-seeking identified five factors that influence the choice of source, and its perceived trustworthiness. The priority given to each of these factors was found to vary according to the criticality and subjectivity of the task. A series of algorithms have been developed that operationalise three of these factors (expertise, experience, affinity) and generate from various data sources a number of trust metrics for use in social network-based information seeking. The most significant of these data sources is Revyu.com, a reviewing and rating Web site implemented as part of this research, that takes input from regular users and makes it available on the Semantic Web for easy re-use by the implemented algorithms. Output of the algorithms is used in Hoonoh.com, a Semantic Web-based system that has been developed to support users in identifying relevant and trustworthy information sources within their social networks. Evaluation of this system's ability to predict source selections showed more promising results for the experience factor than for expertise or affinity. This may be attributed to the greater demands these two factors place in terms of input data. Limitations of the work and opportunities for future research are discussed

The influence of the information stimulus on the human information behavior

The use of multiple digital technologies to perform tasks or solve problems become a regular practice in the corporate environment while the amount of information available to people grows at an impressive pace. However, scant studies dedicated to understanding the influence of the actual use of multiple digital technologies and the influence of information stimulus on human information behavior. Recent literature on the information system positions the study of human information behavior as a critical research area for its power to predict and explain the human behavior. For this reason, this research focus on the influence of information stimulus on human information behavior during the use of multiple digital technologies, precisely the individual behavior in the organizational setting. This study developed three articles, comprehending a literature review, qualitative research, and quantitative research to validate the conceptualized the information stimuli and the proposed cognitive model. The central objective is to understand the influence of the use of multiple digital technologies on human behavior. The findings showed that the information load and information diversity represent the information stimulus that influences the capacity of the information workers to determine their information need, their ability to seek for specific information, and the use of information while performing a task. The recognition of the negative influence of the use multiple technologies was expressed in behaviors such as the need to focus, the strategies to prioritize tasks, the development of self-control, and the uncertainty. The quantitative research with 565 information workers presented support on the hypotheses between information diversity, information load, information need, information seeking, and information use. The results are important once they represent the measurement of the perception about the influence of the information stimulus on the human behavior. Finally, this research makes significant contributions conceptualizing human information behavior in the information system literature and providing a new approach to evaluate human information behavior in the context of high information stimuli

The Uses And Gratifications Of Facebook.Com: An Exploratory Study Of University Students In Pakistan

Facebook has a high penetration rate among university students in the Pakistan, yet few academic studies seek to theoretically understand its popularity and uses. This study explored university students' uses and gratifications of Facebook.com. The Uses and Gratifications Theory (U&G) approach is applied in this research because it has been tested by previous researchers, that with the U&G principle, users can gratify their needs through the very process of using a medium (Cutler & Danowski, 1980). The concept of an active audience, as active receivers with purposive media uses, is the core tenet of the adaptation of theory U&G perspective, and augments its application to the study of Facebook. The focus of study was to explore: (1) the patterns of using Facebook among university students in Pakistan (2) the needs of university students as gratified by using Facebook in Pakistan (3) the benefits of using Facebook among university students in Pakistan and (4) the motivations which induce students to use Facebook. This study utilized the U&G approach as introduced by Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, (1974) to understand the appeal of mass media to the audience, as well as the assumptions that are particularly applicable to interactive media. The Qualitative approach was used for this study and for the focus group discussion technique for data collection. A constant comparative technique method was applied for the analysis of data collected from 8 focus group discussions from the top three research based universities in Pakistan: University of Punjab, Lahore, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, and Agricultural University of Faisalabad

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Exploiting the conceptual space in hybrid recommender systems: a semantic-based approach

Tesis doctoral inédita. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Escuela Politécnica Superior, octubre de 200