Measuring the performance of social media marketing in the charitable domain

Social media services offer a new avenue for non-profit organizations (NPOs) to initiate viral and word-of- mouth marketing. Due to the widespread adoption of these sites, there is the potential for this type of marketing to reach a large audience. The emergence of social media as a new marketing platform leads to fresh challenges in that the online nature of it creates difficulties in attributing actions of intent on social media to real, meaningful action that can help NPOs. This paper provides an interdisciplinary approach to discovering the relationship between actions on social media and the performance of NPOs’ social media marketing campaign. A framework is proposed which distinguishes, tracks and measures different stages of social media marketing activity in order to determine its success. The framework provides a number of metrics - taking into account the disciplines of computer science and management - that can be used to assess performance of NPO campaigns, and is tested on two sample charities. Future research directions for this project are then discussed

Taking the relationship to the next level: a comparison of how supporters converse with charities on Facebook and Twitter

Social media provide a unique opportunity for charities to reach a large audience with whom they can engage in productive two-way conversations. This abstract reports findings from a study that seeks to determine the extent to which these conversations occur, and whether they differ between Facebook and Twitter. Differences arise showing that Facebook receives more conversations in response to the charities' own posts. However, on Twitter more comments are made per each engaged supporter, which could represent more unsolicited discussion that provides an alternative type of value

Designing and Delivering a Curriculum for Data Science Education across Europe

Data is currently being produced at an incredible rate globally, fuelled by the increasing ubiquity of the Web, and stoked by social media, sensors, and mobile devices. However, as the amount of available data continues to increase, so does the demand for professionals who have the necessary skills to manage and manipulate this data. This paper presents the European Data Science Academy (EDSA), an initiative for bridging the data science skills gap across Europe and training a new generation of world-leading data scientists. The EDSA project has established a rigorous process and a set of best practices for the production and delivery of curricula for data science. Additionally, the project’s efforts are dedicated to linking the demand for data science skills with the supply of learning resources that offer these skills

Breakup of the Gondwana supercontinent: East African perspectives from the Early Jurassic to Cretaceous

Accurate mapping of first-order tectonic features such as oceanic fracture zones and continental margins is vital for the production of reliable plate reconstructions. These reconstructions allow for a better understanding of the palaeo-configuration of continental fragments within Gondwana and ultimately provide insight into how and why supercontinents break apart. Detection of spreading lineaments within the heavily sedimented Western Somali Basin (WSB) has been achieved using a novel technique based on directional derivatives of free-air gravity. This new lineament dataset allows for the construction of a high-resolution plate tectonic reconstruction of the WSB, which is in good agreement with ocean magnetic data and the position of the abandoned WSB spreading centre. The model also reveals a change in spreading direction, from NNW-SSE to N-S, during the Late Jurassic. This controversial spreading direction change places the origin of Madagascar within the Tanzania Coastal Basin (TCB), inboard of the Davie Fracture Zone (DFZ), which was previously believed to be the continent-ocean transform margin of the WSB. This tight-fit of Gondwana fragments prior to continental breakup necessitates a reassessment of both the crustal nature of the TCB, which is shown to be partly oceanic in nature, and of the nature of the margins surrounding the WSB. The northern margins of the WSB are likely orthogonally rifted margins. However, the western margins are likely highly segmented and/or obliquely rifted margins. The model also predicts a large transform offset along the Rovuma Basin. Systematic gravity modelling and combined seismic investigations along the Rovuma basin reveals the ‘Rovuma Transform Margin’, which offsets the obliquely rifted margins of northeast Mozambique and Tanzania. The discovery of this transform margin confirms the initial SSE plate motion predicted from gravity lineament analysis and plate reconstructions, and shows that the breakup of the Gondwana supercontinent occurred not just along pre-existing lithospheric weaknesses associated with the Karoo rift system, but also along newly developed highly oblique deformation zones as well. The final breakup of the Gondwana supercontinent, which followed extensive and episodic Karoo aged rifting, was coincident with extensive magmatism in Mozambique and may therefore have been triggered by the interaction of several facilitators of continental breakup (i.e. oblique rifting, pre-existing weaknesses, and magmatism). The oblique breakup of Gondwana along the TCB led to the development of a segmented mid-ocean ridge system within this basin, offset by SSE trending fracture zones. These fracture zones were incompatible with the N-S spreading that followed the Late Jurassic change in plate motion, resulting in the abandonment of mid-ocean ridge segments and compression within this basin. This compression led to the formation of the 250 km long Tanzania Coastal Basin thrust belt, the largest intraplate oceanic thrust belt yet discovered. The cessation of compression within the TCB followed the development of the DFZ, which propagated from south to north. This structure was subsequently dominated by transpression throughout its history, suggesting it was not perfectly compatible with plate driving forces. Formation of the DFZ along aligned weak rifted margins and young oceanic crust may have resulted in the mismatch of plate motions and driving forces, and also suggests a first order ‘top-down’ control on plate motions during the breakup of Gondwana

Wikidatians are Born: Paths to Full Participation in a Collaborative Structured Knowledge Base

We investigated how participation evolves in Wikidata as its editors become established members of the community. Originally conceived to support Wikipedia, Wikidata is a collaborative structured knowledge base, created and maintained by a large number of volunteers, whose data can be freely reused in other contexts. Just like in any other online social environment, understanding its contributors\u27 pathways to full participation helps Wikidata improve user experience and retention. \ \ We analysed how participation changes in time under the frameworks of legitimate peripheral participation and activity theory. We found out that as they engage more with the project, ``Wikidatians\u27\u27 acquire a higher sense of responsibility for their work, interact more with the community, take on more advanced tasks, and use a wider range of tools. Previous activity in Wikipedia has varied effects. As Wikidata is a young community, future work should focus on volunteers with little or no experience in similar projects and specify means to improve critical aspects such as engagement and data quality

Communique, 26 January 2004

Main story: "Netware? Beware!". Second story: "Web cache-'n'-carry shuts up shop". Item: "Basement jacks for self-service musicians...". Item: "No-strings-attached networking". Feature: "ISS-Windows98 relationship: the 5-year ditch?". Contact information: "Contacting Information Systems Services"

The role of data science in web science

Web science relies on an interdisciplinary approach that seeks to go beyond what any one subject can say about the World Wide Web. By incorporating numerous disciplinary perspectives and relying heavily on domain knowledge and expertise, data science has emerged as an important new area that integrates statistics with computational knowledge, data collection, cleaning and processing, analysis methods, and visualization to produce actionable insights from big data. As a discipline to use within Web science research, data science offers significant opportunities for uncovering trends in large Web-based datasets. A Web science observatory exemplifies this relationship by offering an online platform of tools for carrying out Web science research, allowing users to carry out data science techniques to produce insights into Web science issues such as community development, online behavior, and information propagation. The authors outline the similarities and differences of these two growing subject areas to demonstrate the important relationship developing between them.<br/

Maintaining New Zealand’s electrical reserve management tool

Managing the electrical reserves in a small, geographically elongated nation like New Zealand is a challenge. The Reserve Management Tool (RMT) developed over a decade ago optimally schedules the reserve load given the current and anticipated circumstances every half hour to ensure that the reserve requirement for electricity is always met. However with changes in the underlying computing platform, and the recognition that the tool needed to be more flexible to incorporate future generator development meant that this tool needed a revamp. This paper describes the present tool, the motivation for the redesign and demonstrates the new capabilities