Data has tremendous potential to build resilience in government. To realize this potential, we need a new, human-centred, distinctly public sector approach to data science and AI, in which these technologies do not just automate or turbocharge what humans can already do well, but rather do things that people cannot.

In this interview we welcome a new lab team and an old friend of Web Science 

Ian: Steffen, thanks for joining us – it seems a little unusual to welcome you as a new Lab Director when you ran one of our other Labs at Koblenz for many years but your team are new so a very warm welcome to both you and your team.

Steffen: Many thanks – I’m really excited about the new Lab and re-joining the WSTNet.

Ian : How does the work at Stuttgart compare to Koblenz?

Steffen: I think the biggest difference is probably scale – there are several thousand researchers here in Stuttgart so the opportunities to engage in bigger projects across a wider area and multiple disciplines is very exciting.

Ian: What are the broad themes for your group and what are working on right now?

Steffen: Our broad theme is AI and Machine Learning within the Cyber Valley initiative of the Universities of Stuttgart and Tübingen and the Max-Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. Whilst this sounds highly technically focussed we have a strong digital humanities/interdisciplinary (i.e., Web Science) element to our research. I am co-director of the Interchange Forum for Reflecting on Intelligent Systems (IRIS) which considers heterogeneous intelligent systems of people, machines, tools etc and is looking at diverse perspectives such as ethical and societal challenges, the risks and benefits of automated decision-making, bias and the transparency/fairness of automated decisions and responsible human-computer interactions. What makes this type of research possible is that it encompasses researchers across the whole university of Stuttgart and we have more than 30 professors and their teams at Stuttgart engaged in this particular collaboration.

Ian: It sounds like you are pretty convinced by the opportunities that come with inter-organisational and inter-disciplinary collaboration?

Steffen: We saw those opportunities at Koblenz as part of WSTNet: we hosted the 3rd annual Web Science conference in 2011 and also ran and took part in a number of Web Science Summer School events around the world taught by some world-class speakers with students from Singapore, US, Korea, UK and other labs which is a tremendous opportunity for the students. In 2015 I joined Southampton as a Professor in the Web Science Institute and had access to colleagues in Law and the Social Sciences which really transformed the type of research we could do. I later acted as chairman for WSTNet and then joined the WSTNet board.

Ian: Now you are on the board of Trustees for the WST has your perspective changed? Who would you encourage to join the WSTNet?

Steffen: I think the profile of people who are interested in Web Science has changed over the last decade. Traditionally the idea of networks carried a more technical focus on networks of machines but the Web has enabled and highlighted the importance of global interactions between networks of human/machine actors, networks of people/locations, networks of tools/systems, networks of cultures, networks of political and legal system and the list goes on, so the original technical focus has been joined by a vital social science perspective without which it is impossible to understand the complexity of these systems. For example, this week I co-organize a Dagstuhl workshop on “Challenges and Opportunities of Democracy in the Digital Society” with researchers from political science, communication studies, sociology, law and computer science.

There are several ”heavy-hitters” in the current WSTNet network, some who helped define and develop the whole Web Science field and we’ve certainly seen those types of organisation with a solid track record in Web Science and (related approaches) apply and join but as the influence of the Web and the effects of network/machine interaction at scale continues to increase I would also think that groups with strong research credentials in their own (non-technical) disciplines may want to *develop* new digital skills and fold socio-technical, Web Science approaches, into their research arsenal could consider WSTNet a route into Web Science. Its a huge potential resource of technical, cultural and interdisciplinary experience.

As the number of machines and intelligent agents continues to grow (and I think we are only at the very beginning of vast growth) we will see the impact of machines and intelligent agents on every aspect of society and so the need to understand, predict and effectively steward that impact has never been more important. Even for those groups who don’t use the term Web Science we will see the Web Science approach as we have defined and developed it reflected everywhere.

Ian: Steffen – thanks for taking the time to chat with me and once again welcome back to network.

The Web Science Trust (WST) announced today that the inaugural Web Science Trust Test of Time Award was presented to the authors of the paper “Social media as a measurement tool of depression in populations”, Munmun De Choudhury (Georgia Tech), Scott Counts (Microsoft Research) and Eric Horvitz (Microsoft Research).  The authors are the first recipients of this newly established annual award.

 The award was presented during the opening ceremony of the 14^th ACM Web Science Conference hosted by the ICT department of Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain. 

 The paper was first presented at the 2013 ACM Web Science Conference in Paris, France and will be re-presented during a keynote presentation on Wednesday 29 June during this year’s conference.

 Dame Wendy Hall, Executive Director of the Web Science Trust, who announced the award at the opening ceremony, said: “The Web Science Trust is delighted to announce the winners of our first Test of Time Award.  It was hard choosing between some of the wonderful papers that have been presented over the last decade but the trustees felt that this paper captured an important analysis of nearly 70 thousand user posts to develop a novel social media depression index—helping us to understand more about the society that we shape (and that shapes us) through the Web. The paper has been well-cited and the issue of mental health certainly retains much relevance today.”

The authors commented: “We are very honoured to be the first recipients of this award and would like to thank the Web Science Trust for recognizing our 2013 paper and the direction of research that it represents.”

 The ACM Web Science Conference 2022 will run as a hybrid conference from 26-29 June, where authors will present their work either in-person or remotely to participants gathering at the conference venue in Barcelona, or joining online, and will be co-located with the ACM Hypertext Conference and the ACM UMAP Conference.  The Web Science Conference is an interdisciplinary conference where a multitude of research disciplines converge with the purpose of creating greater insight into a complex global Web which is more impactful than the sum of their individual parts.

From Today Microsoft will no longer offer support for Internet Explorer (IE) which racked up 11 versions from its debut 22 years ago in 2015.

Microsoft had already flagged that it was retiring Internet Explorer for some time but given Microsoft users famous reticence to give up older versions of its operating systems and apps time will tell if they will all move to Microsoft Edge. There was a mixed reaction on social media ranging from fond nostalgia to some tounge-in-cheek teasing with one user calling it “the top browser for installing other browsers” Today IE joins a growing list of other browsers founded by Netscape Navigator that are just unable to topple Google Chrome from its 65% market share.