Autumn 2022 Newsletter

Autumn Issue: 2022

In this issue …

ACM Web Science Conference 2023
New WSTNet Labs: Welcome Stuttgart & Rutgers
Digital Democracy – In Conversation with George Metakides
Publications of Interest
Outreach Events

ACM Web Science Conference 2023 (WebSci’23)

Following this year’s conference in Barcelona, we are delighted to announce that WebSci’23 will take place in Austin, Texas and will be co-located with The ACM 2023 Web Conference.

The WebSci’23 Call for Papers (CfP) is now available on the conference website and we invite you to take note of the important dates for this year’s event.

Important Dates
Wed, November 30, 2022 Paper submission deadline
Tue, January 31, 2023 Notification
Tue, February 28, 2023 Camera-ready versions due
Sun-Mon, April 30 – May 1, 2023 Conference dates

Visit the 2023 Conference website

The Proceedings of the Barcelona conference are now available online here.

2022 also saw the first WST Test of Time award going to a team from the US.

Read about the winning article

Two new WSTNet Labs: Stuttgart & Rutgers

We are delighted to welcome not one, but two new WSTNet labs this time: University of Stuttgart and Rutgers University.
Stuttgart and Rutgers may be our newest members but Lab Directors Steffen Staab and Matt Weber are old friends of Web Science.

In this interview we catch up with Steffen Staab to hear about
the new Stuttgart Lab and how being a part of WSTNet will help.

In the next edition of the newsletter we’ll be talking to Matt Weber about Rutgers’ Lab.

Read the full interview

The Future of Democracy: In Conversation with George Metakides

In conversation this time is George Metakides, WST Trustee and Co-Founder of the Digital Enlightenment Forum. Ian Brown sat down to find out a little more about democracy in the digital age and why we should be concerned.

Read full interview

Publications

We recommend some notable books… click on the images to find out more.

Featuring WSTNet Lab Director Fabien Gandon and WST Trustee Jim Hendler, this 3rd edition adds new material and modern examples to an already classic textbook.

This book by Reid Blackman attempts to distill more than 20 years of work on
Ethics/Philosophy into an accessible framework that moves the ethics of AI
from being “squishy” (as Blackman calls it) to a more structured set of decisions for non-experts.

As mentioned in the George Metakides interview above, Zuboff’s book is a detailed examination of the unprecedented power of surveillance capitalism and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control human behaviour. Zuboff identifies the practice as:

“a new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales.”

Whilst progress in machine- and deep learning have opened the doors to both new opportunities, and some dark possibilities, Ben Shneiderman sees a bright future for those who employ HCAI strategies for design and testing. As many technology companies and thought leaders have argued, the goal is not to replace people, but to empower them by making design choices that give humans control over technology.

In Human-Centered AI, Professor Ben Shneiderman offers an optimistic (realist’s) guide to how artificial intelligence can be used to augment and enhance humans’ lives.

Our interview with George Metakides above refers to The Age of the Strongman, where Rachman examines archetypal strong figures including Putin, Xi Jinping, Trump and Bolsonaro. They are portrayed as both formidable yet deeply flawed leaders in a series of essays about the global rise of authoritarian, nationalist-populist leaders and its obviously corrosive impact on the liberal democratic ideal.

Outreach Events

Brave Conversations ran an event in Barcelona and also its first UAE event recently in Sharjah so if you’d like to know more about this or any upcoming BC events, head over to braveconversations.org

Find out about Brave Conversations

Finally

Thank you as always for subscribing to the WST Newsletter. We look forward to seeing you in the next edition. If you have any events, courses and news that you would like to share across the WST network please do get in touch via email using: info@webscience.org.

Subscribe to our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter. Visit our WST homepagefor more news and updates on upcoming events.

Check out our new-look website!!

Best wishes,
Web Science Trust Team

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Summer 2022 Newsletter

Summer Issue: 2022

In this issue …

WebSci’22 coming right up ..
WSTNet Lab Focus: Cardiff
In Conversation with Jennifer Zhu Scott
Recent Publications
Upcoming events around WebSci’22

WebSci’22 coming right up ..

This year’s WebSci will be our first hybrid conference offering live and on-line experiences and we are excited to welcome you to Barcelona in person for all the extra social and unplanned stuff that comes with a live conference.
We’ll be co-located with ACM Hypertext and ACM UMAP.

Here’s a note from the team in Barcelona:

The 2022 ACM Web Science Conference: The Old vs. the New Normal is now less than three weeks away! We welcome everyone to join us from June 26 to 29 – either online or onsite in Barcelona, Spain.

We have confirmed our first two Keynote Speakers:

Leila Zia
Head of Research at Wikimedia Foundation

m.c schraefel
Professor of Computer Science and Human Performance at University of Southampton

We have published the list of accepted papers on topics that include:

Fake news, disinformation and propaganda
COVID-19 and anti-vaccine discourse
TikTok video analysis and YouTube video recommendations
Crowdsource and AI workers
Gender and Racial bias

The full programme consists of both full and short papers, as well as workshops and tutorials.

Barcelona is waiting for you! Registration is open for online and onsite attendance!

Keep an eye on our tweets via the #WebSci22 hashtag, and check out our websitefor further updates. We look forward to welcoming you to this year’s Web Science conference!

Best wishes

WebSci’22 Conference Committee

WSTNet Lab focus: Cardiff

Cardiff University WSTNet Lab has two Lab Directors: Prof. Pete Burnap and Prof. Matt Williams – their recent focus has been on the evidence emerging from social data and also the discovery and analysis of hate speech both using the COSMOS data analysis platform. The lab has created both the HateLab and the Social Data Science Lab as foci for the Lab’s research activities and findings.

In our spotlight interview Matt tells us about how HateLab works and who they are working with but denies being part of a London-based Cyber-Punk band.

Read the full article

In Conversation with Jennifer Zhu Scott

In conversation this time is well-known finance and digital economy expert Jennifer Zhu Scott. Jen recently joined the WST Board of Trustees and we are delighted to welcome her. Ian Brown sat down to find out a little more about Jen’s path to Web Science and why she thinks we’ve invented a whole new kind of poverty and what we should do about it.

Jennifer Zhu Scott has been named one of the most influential woman in technology, speaks widely on FinTech, gives Ted talks, runs her own AI company and also chairs the Creative Commons project.

Jennifer Zhu Scott

Recent Publications

We recommend some notable books… click on the image to find out more.

Featured WSTNet Lab Director Matt Williams explains how to tackle the growth of of prejudice and hate online

Something different this time with a dystopian novel by Jennifer Egan in the style of Black Mirror about a new technology, “Own Your Unconscious”—that allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had, and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others.

Find out more

Upcoming Events

ACM WebSci’22 will be co-located with the ACM Hypertext Conference and the ACM UMAP Conference.

Brave Conversations will be returning to the WebSci’22 conference and this year’s topic will be post-Covid society. The event will be held Sunday 26th June, 2022 from 3 pm CET to 7 pm CET.

Register for Brave Conversations at WebSci’22

There is also a collection of workshop and tutorial events that run in tandem with the main conference. This year’s program includes:

Workshops

1st Workshop on Blockchain and AI for Community

Website

Assessing The Ethical Implications Of Artificial Intelligence In Policing

Website:

General Collective Intelligence and Web Science

Website:

Documenting Web Data for Social Research  #DocuWeb22

Website:

Tutorials

CooRnet: detecting problematic online coordinated link-sharing behavior using R

Website:

Keep an eye out for updates/notifications on Facebook and using the Twitter hashtags #websci22 #websciconf and #webscience.

WebSci’22 Conference Site

Finally

Thank you as always for subscribing to the WST Newsletter. We look forward to seeing you in the next edition. If you have any events, courses and news that you would like to share across the WST network please do get in touch via email using: info@webscience.org.

Subscribe to our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter. Visit our WST homepagefor more news and updates on upcoming events.

Check out our new-look website!!

Best wishes,
Web Science Trust Team

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Spring 2022 Newsletter

Spring Issue: 2022

In this issue …

AI & Facial Recognition in the News – Jim Hendler
Privacy and the Individual – Kieron O’Hara
In Conversation with Bill Thompson
Recent Publications
Upcoming events – WebSci’22

AI & Facial Recognition in the News
Jim Hendler

Jim Hendler, a long-time WST Trustee and AI expert, has recently spoken of his concerns around the use of facial recognition in government departments including the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS). His original article appeared in theconversation.com.

The IRS’s move is aimed at cutting down on identity theft, a crime that affects millions of Americans. The IRS, in particular, has reported a number of tax filings from people claiming to be others, and fraud in many of the programs that were administered as part of the American Relief Plan has been a major concern to the government.

The IRS decision has prompted a backlash, in part over concerns about requiring citizens to use facial recognition technology and in part over difficulties some people have had in using the system, particularly with some state agencies that provide unemployment benefits. The reaction has prompted the IRS to revisit its decision.

Read the full article here

Privacy and the Individual
Kieron O’Hara

In the first of a new WST White Paper series, Web Scientist and Author Kieron O’Hara looks at two approaches to securing rights for the individual through technical and legal/procedural means.

Law has granted individuals some rights over the use of data about them, but data protection rights have not redressed the balance between the individual and the tech giants. A number of approaches aim to augment personal rights to allow individuals to police their own information space, facilitating informational self-determination.

This reports reviews this approach to privacy protection, explaining how controls have generally been conceived either as the use of technology to aid individuals in this policing task, or the creation of further legal instruments to augment their powers. It focuses on two recent attempts to secure or support data protection rights, one using technology and the other the law. The former is called Solid, a decentralised platform for linked data, while the latter is a novel application of trust law to develop data trusts in which individuals’ data is managed by a trustee with the individuals as beneficiaries.

The report argues that structural impediments make it hard for thriving, diverse ecosystems of Solid apps or data trusts to achieve critical mass – a problem that has traditionally haunted this empowering approach.

Read the full article

In Conversation with Bill Thompson

What do you get when you mix Philosophy, Applied Psychology, AI, Political activism and Unix programming with the Web?

In conversation this time is well-known BBC journalist, author and technology pundit Bill Thompson, who is surely an obvious candidate for the titles of both renaissance man and Web Scientist. He recently joined the WST Board of Trustees and we are delighted to welcome him. Ian Brown sat down to find out a little more about Bill’s road from Philosophy to Web Science and why he has been “thinking about the way the network is changing the world”.

Bill Thompson

Recent Publications

We round up some notable recent books. Hopefully you’ve submitted a paper and we wish you the best of luck in winning a best paper award at WebSci’22!

Hannes ­Werthner, Erich ­Prem, Edward­ A.­ Lee, Carlo ­Ghezzi­­­, Editors, Perspectives on Digital Humanism (Springer 2022). Open access collection of papers, including pieces by WSTNet authors, on the relation between human and machine, covering topics such as controlling AI, participation and democracy, the ethics of technology, the arts, fairness, the power of platforms, education, geopolitics and work.

Sheera Frenkel & Cecilia Kang, An Ugly Truth (Bridge Street Press 2021). Exposes the ruthlessness of Facebook’s growth strategy.

Kate Crawford, Atlas of AI (Yale University Press 2021). How AI is changing the world’s geography (largely for the worse), as a technology of extraction.

Find out more

Upcoming Events

The ACM Web Science Conference will run from 26th-29th June at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona and online.

ACM WebSci’22 will be co-located with the ACM Hypertext Conference and the ACM UMAP Conference.

Keep an eye out for updates/notifications on Facebook and using the Twitter hashtags #websci22 #websciconf and #webscience.

WebSci’22 Conference Site

If you missed WebSci’21 then click below for the highlight reel and catchup with selected presentations in our series “From the Video Vault”.

WebSci’21 Highlights
Video Vault

Finally

Thank you as always for subscribing to the WST Newsletter. We look forward to seeing you in the next edition. If you have any events, courses and news that you would like to share across the WST network please do get in touch via email using: info@webscience.org.

Subscribe to our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter. Visit our WST homepage for more news and updates on upcoming events.

Check out our new-look website!!

Best wishes,
Web Science Trust Team

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WebSci’21 Special Summer 2021

 

Special Issue: WebSci’21

In this issue …

Looking back at ACM WebSci’21
Prizewinners at WebSci’21
WebSci’21 Meet the Authors
Untangling the Web Podcast – an interview with Noshir Contractor
Saying Hello: Meeting two new WST Trustees
Upcoming events – WebSci’22

Looking back at WebSci’21

ACM WebSci’21 was hosted by the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton and ran as an online-only conference for the second year since Covid restrictions were put in place. Despite raising new challenges for the organisers, both WebSci’20 and ‘21 offered the widest ever opportunities for participation across the global Web Science community.

The theme this time was Globalisation, Inclusion and the Web in the Context of COVID. Our Keynote Speakers were:

  • Daniel J. Weitzner, Director of the MIT Internet Policy Research Initiative
  • Martha Lane Fox, Entrepreneur and Internet activist
  • Jennifer Zhu Scott, Executive Chairman of The Commons Project
  • Matthew Weber, Associate Professor at Rutgers University
  • Deen Freelon, Associate Professor at UNC Chapel Hill

The conference is over but here are some useful links to catch up:

ACM Proceedings
ACM Companion Proceedings
WebSci’21 Highlights
WebSci’21 Blog

WebSci’21 Prize winning papers

Congratulations to the following authors for their prize winning papers this year. To follow up on these contributions please consult the proceedings (see link above).

  • Monetizing Propaganda: How Far-right Extremists Earn Money by Video Streaming – Megan Squire
    ACM Best Paper
  • Analysis and Prediction of Multilingual Controversy on Reddit – Philipp Koncar, Simon Walk and Denis Relic
    Best Student Paper
  • Wide-AdGraph: Detecting Ad Trackers with a Wide Dependency Chain Graph – Amir Hossein Kargaran, Mohammad Sadegh Akhondzadeh, Mohammad Reza Heidarpour, Mohammad Hossein Manshaei, Kave Salamatian and Masoud Nejad Sattary
    Best Student Paper Honourable Mention
  • Social Science for Natural Language Processing: A Hostile Narrative Analysis Prototype – Stephen Anning, George Konstantinidis and Craig Webber
    Best Student Paper Honourable Mention
  • Building a Social Machine for Graduate MobilityNeha Keshan
    Best PhD Symposium Presentation Award

Meet the Authors

This year’s conference featured new books by Rory Cellan-Jones, Cyd Harrell, Azeem Azhar, Pablo J. Boczkowski, Uta Kohl and Jacob Eisler, and held a special “Meet the Authors” event featuring a new Web Science book “Four Internets” by WST colleagues Kieron O’Hara and Wendy Hall.

“Four Internets” has received critical praise for a timely analysis of cyberspace governance issues and possible futures of a “Splinternet” resulting from the complex and subtle transformation/reshaping of the original vision of a single, unified Internet. The book includes a foreword by Internet pioneer Vinton Cerf.

Find out more

Interviewing the host of Untangling the Web – Noshir Contractor

Untangling the Web is the brainchild of WST Trustee Noshir Contractor and seeks to lay out and examine some of the key issues in Web Science through an informal discussion series in which he invites colleagues to talk about their work and the challenges they face. Ian Brown from WST speaks to Noshir about the series.

IB: What was the driver behind starting a new podcast around Web Science?

Noshir: We are trying to make Web Science more accessible for listeners by approaching real-world challenges and problems, and talking about them from the perspective of people and technology interacting at a huge (often global) scale. You don’t need to know any formal Web Science to listen to this series and to learn something about key challenges and opportunities that emerge from so much digital data mixed with so many people.

IB: How is something like Web Science different from some of the approaches that listeners may be more familiar with like Data Science or Information Science?

Noshir: Actually, defining Web Science in formal terms can be tough, and yet we so often see opportunities and problems that Web Science is uniquely placed to analyse and help us to understand.

The secret sauce is that Web Scientists come from a multitude of disciplines – they are trained lawyers, mathematicians, medics, musicians, teachers, technologists, philosophers and everything in between. Bringing this type of expertise together with an understanding of the structure and interactions of networks at large scale creates a unique perspective.

No other discipline that I know, not only allows interdisciplinary thinking in this way but actually demands it. Unless we bring the complexity of people/society in all its forms into an understanding of the Web we cannot hope to scratch the surface of the ways in which the people and technologies impact and influence each other.

IB: You must be very pleased at the reception you’ve had for the first series. You’ve already put out more than 20 episodes – what’s next for Untangling the Web?

Noshir: We are excited to present a new set of guests including several thought leaders and a mixture of discussions about the past history of technology and the Web through to current research and upcoming challenges and opportunities.

We’re planning some really interesting episodes over the next few months including a special 25th episode interview with Sir Nigel Shadbolt from Jesus College, Oxford so keep an eye on the website and subscribe to the series on iTunes, Spotify or your favourite Podcast platform.

IB: Have any episodes particularly stood out for you so far or are there other upcoming guests you can tell us about ..?

Noshir: Its hard to pick a favourite but I was keen to interview Aleks Krotoski (the author who inspired the name for the podcast). We spoke about how our online lives have become entangled with our offline ones. Her research has found that we bring our existing ideas about society into the virtual worlds we build, but unlike in the past, there’s less space to play around with our identities online. Oh, and there are more consequences – for many people – from the things they did 10 or 15 years ago which can still pop up when you search their name online.

IB: Really timely and interesting stuff. Congratulations on a successful launch and we look forward to the new series

Noshir: Thanks very much – obviously it’s a team effort and thanks go out to all the people behind the scenes that make something like this happen. It’s hard work but we think it’s worth it.

Visit the Podcast Homepage

Saying Hello to two new trustees:

We are delighted to announce two new trustees who are joining WST: Jennifer Zhu Scott, whose work with the World Economic Forum is well known and who brings deep experience of emerging technologies and global governance issues.

Jennifer Zhu Scott

Bill Thompson, experienced BBC technology broadcaster, head of future value research at BBC R&D, and long-time supporter of Web Science, will also join the WST Board completing the new trustee line-up. He is passionate about the Web, Web Science and keeping data safe and accessible through the power of open source and archiving.

Bill Thompson

Upcoming Events

We are delighted to have handed the torch over from Southampton to Barcelona for ACM WebSci’22 which will run from 27th-30th June. We will report on further details as the program develops.

Please note that the conference site is https://websci22.webscience.org and will be updated in the near future.

Keep an eye out for updates/notifications on Facebook and using the Twitter hashtags #websci22 #websciconf and #webscience

Finally

Thank you as always for subscribing to the WST Newsletter. We look forward to seeing you in the next edition. If you have any events, courses and news that you would like to share across the WST network please do get in touch via email using: info@webscience.org.

Subscribe to our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter. Visit our WST homepage for more news and updates on upcoming events.

Check out our new-look website!!

Best wishes,
Web Science Trust Team

 

Newsletter Spring 2021

Spring Newsletter

In this issue …

Latest news about the 2021 Web Science Conference
Announcing our new partnership with Brave Conversations
Noshir Contractor nominated to ICA
Untangling the Web Podcast goes from strength to strength
LAB FEATURE: NUS (Singapore)
PhD FEATURE: Jessica Van Brummelen (MIT)
Recent Publications
Say Hello / Wave Goodbye
Recent & Upcoming Events

WebSci’21 Conference News

 

Once again the ACM Web Science Conference will run as an online conference this year. The theme is Globalisation, Inclusion and the Web in the Context of COVID.

Web Science is an interdisciplinary field dedicated to understanding the complex and multiple impacts of the Web on society and vice versa. The Web has enabled a globally connected network of individuals and communities, but divides still exist and new ones emerge. Fostering an inclusive and equitable online environment is a persistent challenge. In recent years, this challenge has been amplified by the increasing prevalence of artificial intelligence and the automation of Web-based tasks, as well as ongoing inequalities in Web access, use, and skills.

The conference will call attention to these challenges and how they might be addressed, particularly in light of the ongoing global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are seeing, for example, just how important global collaboration within and between scientific communities has been to swift vaccine development, and the essential role of the Web in timely and effective public health communications.

Presenters and participants will have multiple opportunities to engage over a full week of talks, Spotlight Panels, workshops, social events and “Meet the Author” informal discussions. New events are being added to the programme all the time, and we already have a growing list of Keynote Speakers:

  • Daniel Weitzner, director of the MIT Internet Policy Research Initiative
  • Baroness Martha Lane Fox CBE, co-founder of LastMinute.com
  • Jennifer Zhu Scott, Executive Chairman of The Commons Project
  • Matthew Weber, Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University

The core programme will take place in European time, and there will also be satellite workshops/events in SE Asia and the USA. All sessions will be recorded, so you don’t need to cover every time zone in one day! More details of the presenters and other conference activities will be shared in the lead up to the event. Keep an eye on our tweets via the #WebSci21 hashtag, and check out our website (below) for further updates and registration information.

We look forward to welcoming you to the second wholly online Web Science conference in June.

Registration will be just 50 pounds to attend the full 5 days of the conference.

Visit the Conference Website

 

WST Trustee elected President of ICA

Noshir Contractor’s upcoming post as International Communication Association (ICA) president will tap into his vast expertise in creating and nurturing diverse global networks as well his insight into Web Science.

The ICA is the preeminent professional organization for communication scholars and researchers from around the globe. It was founded over 50 years ago and comprises about 4,500 members in 80 countries. Building on its past accomplishments, Noshir wants to reimagine opportunities for growth, and as President-Elect-Select, he’s set a threefold agenda to expand representation, access, and unity within the ICA.

“It is our goal to raise awareness of communication as a credible disciplinary landing ground for scholars,” he said. “I see my role as doing what I study, and that is building networks and nurturing those networks.”

Read the whole article

The team at Brave Conversations, led by Anni Rowland-Campbell, has been working on Web Science questions where “the rubber meets the road” since even before hosting their first event under the Web Science umbrella in 2017. They have travelled the world speaking with governments and businesses whilst dragging in unsuspecting “real people” to talk about social + technological issues and the sensitive topics that they raise for all of us.

Brave Conversations continues to be extremely popular and we want to recognise the incredible impact that the team has had in a way that complements and extends what our academic partners are trying to do through research.

With this in mind we are announcing that Brave Conversations (a product of Intersticia.org) becomes the latest distinguished WST Gold Partner.

Visit Brave Conversations

Untangling the Web Podcast

This new series is hosted by Web Science expert, Northwestern University professor and President-Elect-Select of the International Communication Association (ICA), Noshir Contractor. Noshir interviews thought leaders in the technology and research space to help all of us (including non-experts) navigate some of the most burning issues in Web Science: the study of how the Web is shaping and influencing our society just as we are shaping and influencing the Web.

In each episode (there will soon be 10 in the series) Noshir invites guests with unique perspectives and policy/research experiences to talk about various facets of Web Science. You can subscribe to UTW on Apple, Spotify and other Podcast platforms.

Through this, listeners can hear about the challenges — and excitement — that comes with understanding how networks of people and machines interact on a global scale. And how we can avoid the Internet fragmenting into distinct “splinternets.”

Visit the Podcast Homepage

FOCUS ON WSTNet: NExT Lab (NUS) 

with thanks to NUS for this article.

NExT++ Centre conducts leading-edge research into deriving useful insights from heterogeneous data analytics that are sometimes known as Big Data.

The Centre has been working on rich media content analysis and search, live social media analytics for several years. As a result, the Centre develops large-scale systems working with live social media data, wellness data, and question-answering. Besides producing more than hundred publications in leading conferences, the Centre has also incubated two successful technology startup companies — ViSenze, focusing on mobile visual search and analytics, and 6Estates, focusing on unstructured data analytics for finance and marketing.

NExT have been working with three key trends in R&D in IT and applications:

  • The availability of large-scale multi-channel heterogeneous data along with domain knowledge. Computational models have had to be able to take advantage of these data types and channels for effective computation
  • The emergence and dominance of deep learning AI systems for a wide range of applications. Many such applications in vertical domains with large amounts of data are being solved effectively. However, although deep learning methods are found to be effective, they are often criticized for being opaque, unexplainable, and occasionally make big mistakes that humans would not usually make
  • The development of AI systems that are trustworthy and accountable. With AI systems being used in applications that affect users’ daily lives, many governments, corporations, and increasingly end users are demanding these systems to be ethical, accountable, and robust. As explainability is the easiest to tackle, many current research efforts focus on explainable AI.
  • Visit the Lab Page

 

WSTNet Vice-Chair Tat-Seng Chua

Our Centre Director at NUS (and Vice-Chairman of WSTNet) is Professor Tat-Seng Chua. He has co-authored/edited over 600 publications in support of his teaching and research projects. He has been the co-Director of NExT++ Center, a joint research centre between NUS and Tsinghua University on Extreme Search, since 2010. He also founded the Lab for Media Search (LMS), which conducts regular seminars on Multimedia Information Retrieval and Social Media Analytics. He has regularly hosted summer schools bringing together students from multiple WSTnet universities internationally.

His main research interests include unstructured data analytics, multimedia information retrieval, recommendation and conversation systems and emerging applications in e-commerce and fintech.

When we spoke to Tat-Seng we asked about Web Science and his ground-breaking work on Observatories of social media content. He said:

“These observatories enable us to mine weak signals and to perform causal reasoning to infer users insights from the data streams, with applications in FinTech, food security, and infectious disease detection.”

Learn more about Tat-Seng

FOCUS ON Students: Jessica (MIT)

Jessica Van Brummelen is a Mechanical Engineering student, orginally from Canada, whose focus lay in the area of autonomous vehicles/systems. Like many researchers who end up drawn to the Web Science perspective (networks of people and technology at large scale), the engineering question: “How do we decide what the car should do?” started to morph into other more socially-oriented questions such as:

What are the social implications of the decisions made by the vehicle’s AI?

At the time of her undergraduate engineering research, Jessica was volunteering teaching the Scratch programming language to students across a range of ages when she applied to Hal Abelson’s MIT App Inventor PhD programme.

Several of these earlier threads were drawn together into a research proposal centered around the interplay between mobile apps, teaching children and AI learning. Jessica is now studying for her PhD at MIT.

Her research activities fall into three areas:

  • Working with children/teachers using AI and programming and having them consider the implications of the instructions they give to machines
  • Having the children “teach” an AI and consider the implications of mistakes that the AI can make if it learns incorrectly and who has the power/responsibility to address those mistakes
  • Programming AI’s through a conversational interface.

When we spoke to Jessica it was striking how her work fell squarely into the Web Science domain considering not only the “mechanics” of the technology but also the AI as an agent in the human/machine interaction and the importance of the ethics and perceived responsibilities in that interaction.

We wish Jessica every success in her research and look forward to hearing more about it in the future.

Jessica’s recent publications include:

(preprint; conditionally accepted to be presented at EAAI at AAAI Feb. 2-9, 2021)

(preprint; conditionally accepted to be presented at CHI May 8-13 2021)

(2020 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC))

(EAAI at AAAI 2020)

If you would like to nominate a student or have your own PhD research featured in a future newsletter please send a name, an email address and a brief summary of the PhD topic to info@webscience.org.

Say Hello – Wave Goodbye

Steffen Staab steps down as Chair of the WSTNet labs and joins as a new WST Trustee Board member – congratulations Steffen. Emilio Ferrara takes over as our new Chair of the WSTNet labs and is joined by Tat-Seng Chua who joins as Vice-Chair – congratulations and welcome!

We are very sad to say goodbye to Joanna Lewis who, whilst remaining a friend of WST and an enthusiastic supporter of Web Science, is stepping down as a Director and Trustee. Sincere thanks for all your hard work over many years.

Recent Publications 

Unsurprisingly, in this COVID year, when so many things went online, there were plenty of important books about the Web and the Internet, some from within Web Science, as well as journalistic or business-oriented texts that chronicle how technology affects us, and is delivered.

Here is a selection of some of the publications that caught our eye:

  • Anu Bradford, The Brussels Effect: How the European Union Rules the World (Oxford University Press), describes the EU’s use of law to extend its global reach on issues like privacy and consumer safety.
  • Laura DeNardis, Derrick L. Cogburn, Nanette S. Levinson & Francesca Musiani (eds.), Researching Internet Governance: Methods, Frameworks, Futures (M.I.T. Press), an impressive collection of methodological chapters from leading figures.
  • Mark Elliott, Elaine Mackey & Kieron O’Hara, The Anonymisation Decision-Making Framework: European Practitioners’ Guide (UKAN), an upgrade of Elliott et al’s ADF data anonymisation methodology to address new issues brought in by GDPR, available for free download
  • Sarah Frier, No Filter: The Inside Story of How Instagram Transformed Business, Celebrity and Our Culture (Simon & Schuster) narrates the rise, and painful absorption into Facebook, of the photo sharing platform.
  • Reed Hastings & Erin Meyer, No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention (Virgin), the boss of Netflix sets out his management philosophy.
  • Mireille Hildebrandt & Kieron O’Hara (eds.), Life and the Law in the Era of Data-Driven Agency (Edward Elgar), an international multidisciplinary collection of chapters reacting to legal, political, philosophical and technical issues raised by Hildebrandt’s 2015 book Smart Technologies and the End(s) of Law.
  • Jill Lepore, If Then: How One Data Company Invented the Future (John Murray), a celebrated historian becomes an archaeologist of the data world, recounting the men and women who created Simulmatics, a pioneering analytics company of the 1960s.
  • Kevin Macnish & Jai Galliott (eds.), Big Data and Democracy (Edinburgh University Press), is an international collection of papers largely from the perspective of philosophy and politics.
  • Charlton McIlwain, Black Software: The Internet and Racial Justice, From the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter (Oxford University Press), chronicling the neglected figures who worked to make black politics central to the Internet’s birth and paved the way for 21st century activism for racial justice.
  • Johan Norberg, Open: The Story of Human Progress (Atlantic Books), arguing that the principles of openness that drove the development of the Internet have been key to human progress throughout history.
  • Carissa Véliz, Privacy is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data (Bantam Press), continues the debate kicked off by Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, by arguing from a philosophical perspective that the trade in personal data should be banned.

Recent/Upcoming Events

  • WebSci’21 21-25 June 2021, Southampton, UK and many other locations
  • Brave Conversations is coming to WebSci’21 and later in Riyadh date tbc. 

Finally

Thank you as always for subscribing to the WST Newsletter. We look forward to seeing you in the next edition. If you have any events, courses and news that you would like to share across the WST network please do get in touch via email using: info@webscience.org.

Subscribe to our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter. Visit our WST homepage for more news and updates on upcoming events.

Best wishes,
Web Science Trust Team

Copyright (C) 2021 Web Science Trust. All rights reserved.

 

Spring 2020 Newsletter

 

Spring Newsletter

With major disruption following the Coronavirus outbreak we’ll be considering the impact that networks (of people and of (dis)information) are having and the issue of network resilience highlighted by panic buying/selling. In this edition we’ll talk about our newest WSTNet Lab in India and link to spotlight interviews with a WSTNet Student and one of our WSTNet Labs.  

In This Issue:

Coronavirus – A Networks Perspective 

WebSci’20 Southampton: An Update

WSTNet Lab Profile: Inria

PhD Profile: Simon Jonsson (Southampton)

Saying Hello/Goodbye

Recent Publications

Recent and Upcoming Events

 
Coronavirus – A Networks Perspective

Whilst at its heart the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, and the associated COVID-19 pandemic, is a biological event, the impacts and reporting around it have social impact in many ways, for example in the ways we react to the event, cope with it, and judge our governments and health services.

Earlier this week several major social media providers including Google, Twitter, Facebook and other social networks released a joint statement (https://about.fb.com/news/2020/03/coronavirus/#joint-statement) in support of handling fake news and mis-information related to COVID-19. Our perceptions of the outbreak (as much as any objective facts) have led to fake cures, conspiracy theories, stock market panic selling (even across normally negatively correlated instruments) and panic buying of, and price gouging (profiteering) around, hard-to-find supplies; all of which have figured prominently in recent news reports. A notable common thread running through many of these issues (and also the evidence-based approach to modelling the spread of the virus) is the perspective that many of them could be considered to be networks: epidemiological networks, supply-chain networks, financial networks, social networks, academic/business networks and “social machines” (the interaction between human and machine actors in large networks). Command-and-control hierarchies are simply overwhelmed by the movement of information at scale through these networks.


Click here to read the full article.

 
WebSci’20 Southampton: An Update
 

ACM Web Science (now in its 12th year) will be hosted by the Web Science Institute (WSI) at the University of Southampton July 7th-July 10th 2020. With so many live events already cancelled or under review, the organisers have stressed that several alternatives were considered to both support the work of the Web Science research community whilst safeguarding the health of its members.

The conference committee led by Prof. Dame Wendy Hall has announced:


“ Given the situation in relation to Coronavirus (COVID-19), the ACM Web Science Conference will this year run as an online conference, where presenters will be able to present their work remotely to the online participants. Once we have the infrastructure plans in place we will publish the registration fees, which will be nominal. We will provide updates via this website and mailing lists.

The Conference Committee sends its best wishes to you and your families during this challenging time.”


The conference website is available with information about the event and readers will be updated with details and advice as the situation develops.

 
WSTNet Lab Profile: Inria

Inria is the French national research institute for digital science and technology. World-leading research and technological innovation are an integral part of its DNA. Inria’s 3,500 researchers and engineers put their passion for digital technology to work in nearly 200 project teams, most of which are joint teams with our academic partners, including major research universities and the CNRS. They explore new fields, often in collaboration with different disciplines and industrial partners, with the aim of meeting ambitious challenges.

As a technology institute, Inria supports the development of numerous software products, sometimes making a global impact via the open source model. Because technology start-ups are powerful channels for research outcomes, Inria also supports entrepreneurial risk-taking and start-up creation (Deeptech). Firmly established on major university campuses and in industrial ecosystems, the Institute is at the heart of the digital revolution.

Click Here to see the full article.

 

Fabien Gandon is a Research Director and Senior Researcher at Inria, France.

Fabien’s PhD in 2002 pioneered the joint use of distributed artificial intelligence (AI) and Semantic Web to manage a variety of data sources and users above a Web architecture. Then, as a research project leader at Carnegie Mellon University (USA), he proposed AI methods to enforce privacy preferences in querying and reasoning about personal data. In 2004, recruited as a researcher at Inria, he started to study models and algorithms to integrate social media and knowledge-based AI systems on the Web while keeping humans in the loop. In 2012 he became the representative of Inria at W3C and founded Wimmics, a joint research team on bridging social and formal semantics on the Web with AI methods. In 2017 he established and became the director of the joint research laboratory between Inria and the QWANT search engine. 

Fabien remarked :

“In Web Science, we should build our research program as a joint effort with two research fields born in the 50s: “AI” for Artificial Intelligence and “IA” for Intelligence Amplification and Intelligence Augmentation. The Web Science research agenda must account for the fact that the long term potential of the Web is to augment and link all forms of intelligence.”

Click here to read the full article
Click here to visit the Inria website
 
 
WSTNet Student Profile: Simon Jonsson

Simon is completing his second year at the Web Science Institute (WSI) at the University of Southampton where he is working towards a PhD in Web Science on “Increasing engagement and learning performance in educational apps”.



We spoke to Simon about his interest in enhanced learning techniques and how he hopes to contribute towards improved learning experiences at a time when many are relying so heavily on remote and on-line learning approaches.


Simon’s take on Web Science from his own experience:
 
“The most significant aspect of Web Science has been the interdisciplinarity – the opportunity to work with aspects of education coming from a background in Maths and Psychology. That interdisciplinarity is so important.”

Click here to read the full article

 
 
Say Hello – Wave Goodbye

WSTNet continues to grow steadily and we are delighted to announce that the IIIT Bangalore is the latest Lab to join the network indicating the growing interest in Web Science in India. 

  • Our Koblenz Lab director, Prof. Steffen Staab, has moved to the University of Stuttgart and his replacement will be announced in the next newsletter. 
  • Prof. Yike Guo, Lab Director for Imperial, is working at the University of Hong Kong and will be supported by his Data Science Lab team in his absence.
 
 
Recent Publications

Mireille Hildebrandt & Kieron O’Hara (eds.), Life and the Law in the Era of Data-Driven Agency, 
https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781788971997/9781788971997.xml


Sarah J. Jackson, Moya Bailey & Brooke Foucault Welles, #HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice, 
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/hashtagactivism

Steven Levy, Facebook: The Inside Story,
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/551043/facebook-by-steven-levy/ 


Joanne McNeil, Lurking: How a Person Became a User, 
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374194338

Fil Menczer, Santo Fortunato & Clayton A. Davis, A First Course in Network Science, 
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/first-course-in-network-science/EE22722F27519D8BB1443C7225C57BAF

Daniel Susskind, A World Without Work: Technology, Automation and How We Should Respond, 
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/306/306864/a-world-without-work/9780241321096.html

Anna Wiener, Uncanny Valley: A Memoir, 
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374719760

See also two interesting new policy interventions: 

The new European Commission has already marked out a strong focus on issues to do with digital technology, developing (and defining?) an EU fit for the digital age. For the EU’s Digital Strategy, see 
https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age_en.

Meanwhile, a new report by Diane Coyle and colleagues for the Nuffield Foundation in the UK has examined the complex problem of how we put a value on the data that we create and exchange. See their literature review and the policy implications at 
https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/project/valuing-data-foundations-for-data-policy.


 
Head over to the website to see more Web Science publications
 
 
Recent and Upcoming Events
 
February 12th 2020.  Brave Conversations in Bengaluru, India.
The new Web Science Lab at IIIT Bangalore ran a lively event together with students from the WSI, Southampton as part of the Brave Conversations series.

July 6th-7th 2020.  Brave Conversations in Southampton, UK. 
Brave Conversations has become a global event organised by Intersticia running short courses all across the globe for businesses, government and individuals to come together to discuss both the Why and the How of technology in the context of social goods and ethical choices.

July 7th-10th 2020.  12th Annual ACM WebSci’20 Conference at University of Southampton. Details and updates are available on the website and can be found here.
 
Thank you for subscribing to the WST Newsletter. We look forward to seeing you in the next edition. If you have any events, courses and news that you would like to share across the WST network please do get in touch via email using:
 

Subscribe to our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter. Visit our WST homepage for more news and updates on upcoming events.

We hope you enjoy the new Newsletter – please don’t hesitate to let us know what you think and if we can improve our service.  Send us an email to info@webscience.org.
 
Best wishes,
Web Science Trust Team