Whom should we sense in 'social sensing' - analyzing which users work best for social media now-casting

Given the ever increasing amount of publicly available social media data, there is growing interest in using online data to study and quantify phenomena in the offline "real" world. As social media data can be obtained in near real-time and at low cost, it is often used for "now-casting" indices such as levels of flu activity or unemployment. The term "social sensing" is often used in this context to describe the idea that users act as "sensors", publicly reporting their health status or job losses. Sensor activity during a time period is then typically aggregated in a "one tweet, one vote" fashion by simply counting. At the same time, researchers readily admit that social media users are not a perfect representation of the actual population. Additionally, users differ in the amount of details of their personal lives that they reveal. Intuitively, it should be possible to improve now-casting by assigning different weights to different user groups. In this paper, we ask "How does social sensing actually work?" or, more precisely, "Whom should we sense--and whom not--for optimal results?". We investigate how different sampling strategies affect the performance of now-casting of two common offline indices: flu activity and unemployment rate. We show that now-casting can be improved by 1) applying user filtering techniques and 2) selecting users with complete profiles. We also find that, using the right type of user groups, now-casting performance does not degrade, even when drastically reducing the size of the dataset. More fundamentally, we describe which type of users contribute most to the accuracy by asking if "babblers are better". We conclude the paper by providing guidance on how to select better user groups for more accurate now-casting.Comment: This is a pre-print of a forthcoming EPJ Data Science pape

Let's track! strategies to establish active people tracking in workplaces

The action research component is conducted by developing a system that delivers insights into teamwork dynamics, as revealed by tracking the social network interactions that occur within collaborative work environments. I constructed a working prototype that utilised an indoor people tracking system that captures people's movements as they operate within their workspace. It is capable of simultaneously monitoring the progress of multiple cohabitating project teams. Focusing on providing context specific insights, I designed a flexible behaviour model that constructed customised social networks to extract interactions of interest from the tracked data. The visually rich analysis reporting that was layered with contextual cues enabled quick cognition by the intended viewer. The targeted user covers all levels of the organisation from project collaborators to the support personnel and upper management. With this setup, everyone can participate in a data-supported reflective learning process. The original contribution of my research is two-fold. Firstly, the people tracking system and analytics I developed demonstrated the technical capability to provide real time insights to workspace design, project management and human resource management applications. Secondly, through reference to my three case studies, I argue that a user-centric approach is critical for the successful integration and adaptation of people tracking systems and analytics into real world workplace practices

Life in Solitary: Anthropological Assumptions as Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

Claims about human nature are unavoidable in political theory. A theory about which social arrangements are best for human beings must make some claims about the nature of the human beings - how they behave, what they desire, etc. These anthropological assumptions provide the theoretical foundation for political theory and the building blocks of social models. One way of criticizing a sociopolitical theory is to target these assumptions and argue that it is premised upon a wrong or too simple view of human behavior. Simplified assumptions are often used in scientific models, as they can lead to hypotheses that can be tested empirically. The simplified assumptions can be justified if they lead to correct predictions. This is more complicated in social theory where the building blocks in the model are human beings because the models can affect the behavior of their subjects. This can happen in different ways: Directly, because humans are responsive to the way they are described - how we think of ourselves directly impacts how we behave - and indirectly, because the hypotheses of social models are often used as legitimation of policies and institutional designs that regulate human relations and behavior. The models about human nature thus become part of human nature. This leads to a second way of critiquing sociopolitical theories: Not by stating that they misrepresent a true human nature but that they describe humans as affected by such theories and by the social arrangements the theories are used to justify. I find this line of critique more fruitful as it does not rely on the claim that there exists a true human nature that is static and unaffected by social arrangements and beliefs. This dissertation examines how claims about human nature impact political and economic theories and how these theories impact human behavior and subjectivity. It focuses on individualistic theories premised upon a view of humans as solitary creatures whose preferences can be modeled as if they are independent of others. Such models lead to the theoretical primacy of conflict between independent subjects and the theoretical implausibility of cooperation and trust between them - thus, certain social and political arrangements are seen as necessary. This view exists in the political philosophy of Hobbes and Rawls, and in the social theory of Rational Choice which has been the foundation of neoclassical economics and neoliberal policies. The critical issue is not so much that it is a wrong view of human nature but rather that it affects human subjectivity and behavior - that there is a risk that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. That could be the case if one form of social arrangement and ideology could ever be hegemonic, but in reality we occupy different social roles in different relations, leading to different forms of subjectivity and rationality that clash and interact in unpredictable ways.Staðhæfingar um mannlegt eðli eru óhjákvæmilegar í stjórnmálakenningum. Kenning um hvaða samfélagslega skipan sé best fyrir mannverur verður að innihalda einhverjar fullyrðingar um eðli manna - um hvernig þeir hegða sér, hvað þeir þrá og þar fram eftir götunum. Þessar mannfræðilegu ályktanir skapa fræðilegan grunn stjórnmálakenninga og eru uppistaðan í samfélagslegum líkönum. Ein leið til að gagnrýna samfélags-pólitíska kenningu er að veitast að þessum ályktunum og færa rök fyrir að þær séu byggðar á rangri eða einfaldaðri mynd af mannlegri hegðun. Vísindaleg líkön styðjast iðulega við einfaldaðar ályktanir vegna þess að þær geta leitt af sér tilgátur sem unnt er að sannprófa. Einfaldaðar ályktanir geta verið réttmætar ef þær hafa nákvæmt forspárgildi. Þetta er eilítið flóknara þegar samfélagskenningar eru annars vegar og uppistaða samfélagslíkansins eru mannverur vegna þess að líkönin geta haft áhrif á hegðun fólks. Það getur gerst með mismunandi hætti: með beinum hætti vegna þess að mannfólk er móttækilegt fyrir lýsingum á þeim - hvernig við hugsum um okkur hefur bein áhrif á hvernig við hegðum okkur - og óbeint vegna þess að tilgátur samfélagslíkana eru oft nýttar til að réttlæta stefnur og stofnanagerðir sem setja reglur um mannleg samskipti og hegðun. Líkön um manneðli verða þannig hluti af manneðlinu. Það getur af sér aðra leið til þess að gagnrýna samfélags-stjórnmálakenningar: ekki með því að fullyrða að þær gefi ranga mynd af hinu sanna manneðli heldur að þær lýsi hvernig menn mótist af slíkum kenningum og þeirri samfélagsskipan sem kenningarnar nýtast til að ljá lögmæti. Ég tel þessa síðari leið frjórri vegna þess að hún reiðir sig ekki á staðhæfingu um að til sé sönn mannleg náttúra sem sé kyrrstæð og ónæm gagnvart samfélagslegri skipan og viðhorfum. Þessi doktorsritgerð felst í rannsókn á því hvernig staðhæfingar um manneðli hafa áhrif á stórnmála- og hagfræðikenningar og hvernig þessar kenningar móta hegðun og sjálfsveru manna. Beint er sjónum að einstaklingsmiðuðum kenningum sem byggja á mynd af stakstæðum einstaklingum hverra langanir (e. preferences) eru látnar ráðast af því sem væru þeir hverjir óháðir öðrum. Í slíkum líkönum er tvennt sett fræðilega á oddinn, átök milli sjálfstæðra einstaklinga og ósennileiki samvinnu og trausts þeirra á milli - þar af leiðandi er viss samfélagsleg og pólitísk skipan talin vera alger nauðsyn. Þetta viðhorf má sjá í heimspeki Hobbes og Rawls og í samfélagskenningu um skynsamlegt val (Rational Choice Theory) sem hefur verið grunnur nýklassískrar hagfræði og nýfrjálshyggju-stefnu. Vandinn er ekki sá að þetta sé röng sýn á manneðlið heldur miklu frekar að hún hafi áhrif á sjálfsveru og hegðun fólks - að það er hætta á að hún verði að sjálfrætinni spá (e. self-fulfilling prophecy). Það gæti orðið tilfellið ef ein samfélagsskipan og samsvarandi hugmyndafræði yrðu allsráðandi, en veruleikinn er hins vegar sá að við gegnum ólíkum hlutverkum í mismunandi samböndum, sem geta af sér ólíkar gerðir sjálfsveru og skynsemi sem rekast á og verka hver á aðra með ófyrirsjáanlegum hætti.This dissertation was completed at the University of Iceland with partial funding from Rannsóknamiðstöð Íslands and the research projects Embodied Critical Thinking, The Reality of Money, and Feminist Philosophy Transforming Philosophy