Oct 9, 2019 | News, OII, Publications, WSTNet Lab
Phil Howard is the new WSTnet Lab Director for Oxford’s OII (Oxford Internet Institute) and recently gave a distinguished lecture at Southampton’s Web Science Institute (WSI).
Tomorrow’s Leviathan: Intelligent Machines in a Political World
When will an Artificial Intelligence run for elected office? This may seem like a strange provocation– just an invitation to futurism and speculation. Yet AI systems are rolling out across economic, cultural and political life. Professor Philip Howard explores how AI is changing our experience of politics and rewriting democracy’s “terms of service”.
Click here to watch a replay of Phil’s talk
Philip Howard is the Director of the Oxford Internet Institute and a Statutory Professor at Balliol College, Oxford. His research has demonstrated how new information technologies are used in both civic engagement and social control in countries around the world. His research and opinion writing has been featured in the New York Times, Financial Times, and many other international media outlets. Recently, he was awarded the National Democratic Institute’s 2018 “Democracy Prize” and Foreign Policy magazine named him a “Global Thinker” for pioneering the social science of fake news.
Sep 26, 2019 | News, Publications, Resources
As an interdisciplinary topic it may not always be obvious where to find or where to submit web science research and interdisciplinary perspectives. Whilst the list is not exhaustive it may spark some ideas.
Big Data and Society, journals.sagepub.com/home/bds
Ethics and Information Technology, www.springer.com/computer/swe/journal/10676
IEEE Internet Computing, www.computer.org/csdl/magazines/ic
Journal of Web Semantics, www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-web-semantics
World Wide Web, link.springer.com/journal/11280
International Journal of Web Information Systems, www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/journals.htm?id=ijwis
Computer Law and Security Review, www.journals.elsevier.com/computer-law-and-security-review
International Journal of Law and Information Technology, academic.oup.com/ijlit
Philosophy and Technology, link.springer.com/journal/13347
Technology in Society, www.journals.elsevier.com/technology-in-society
Journal of Internet Commerce, www.tandfonline.com/toc/wico20/current
Journal of Medical Internet Research, www.jmir.org/
Language@Internet, www.languageatinternet.org/
International Journal of Internet Science, www.ijis.net/
Media-N, iopn.library.illinois.edu/journals/median/about
New Media and Society, journals.sagepub.com/home/nms
Social Media + Society, journals.sagepub.com/home/sms
Journal of Social Media in Society, www.thejsms.org/index.php/TSMRI
Social Networks, www.journals.elsevier.com/social-networks
Online Social Networks and Media, www.journals.elsevier.com/online-social-networks-and-media
Computational Social Networks, computationalsocialnetworks.springeropen.com/
Aug 15, 2019 | News, Publications, Resources
The Journal of Web Science
Web Science embraces the study of the Web as a vast information network of people and communities. It also includes the study of people and communities by using the digital records of user activity mediated by the Web. An understanding of human behavior and social interaction can contribute to our understanding of the Web, and data obtained from the Web can contribute to our understanding of human behavior and social interaction. Accordingly, Web Science involves analysis and design of Web architecture and applications, as well as studies of the people, organizations, and policies that shape and are shaped by the Web.
To address these diverse goals, The Journal of Web Science is inherently interdisciplinary, integrating computer and information sciences, communication, linguistics, sociology, psychology, economics, law, political science, and other disciplines.
The Journal of Web Science is unique in the manner in which it brings these disciplines together in creative and critical dialogue. We therefore invite research papers describing original research from all the above disciplines, as well as those that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries.
In order to best serve the community, The Journal of Web Science will provide immediate open access to its content. Accepted papers will be published online immediately upon acceptance. The copyright of the published articles stays with the authors. It is free for authors as well as for readers. Final Versions are published at the Now Publishers Journal Homepage.
Mar 4, 2019 | News, OII, Publications, WSI, WST Trustees and Fellows, WSTNet Lab
A new book “The Theory and Practice of Social Machines” has been published by Springer. This is an exciting new output from the SOCIAM project in which the University of Southampton was a partner, together with the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh
Professor Dame Wendy Hall, Executive Director of the Web Science Trust and Executive Director of the Web Science Institute, one of the twenty WSTNet Labs, is one of the authors. She commented:
“The concept of Social Machines is a powerful way of looking at the socio-technical systems enabled by the Web, such as Wikipedia. It is essential to think about them in an interdisciplinary way – social interactions and technological processes co-create systems that can be very empowering for communities, enabling them to define their own problems and seek solutions. This is exactly the sort of sociotechnical research issue that Web Science was designed to pursue.”
The term “Social Machines” was introduced by Tim Berners-Lee in 1999. Today we see them as networks of people and devices at scale, their behaviour co-constituted by human participants and technological components. They harness the power of the crowd, with everyone able to contribute – to document situations, cooperate on tasks, exchange information, or simply to play. Existing social processes may be scaled up, and new social processes enabled, to solve problems, augment reality, create new sources of value, or disrupt existing practice.
One of Dame Wendy’s co-authors, Dr Kieron O’Hara, associate professor of electronics and computer science at Southampton, added:
“The spread of social machines has been amazing, and the research programme was quite prescient. When SOCIAM began in 2012, there was relatively little to study. Now they are very common indeed. The book describes in detail examples from citizen science and healthcare to music and mathematics. We even consider the augmented reality game Pokémon Go!
Partnership and interdisciplinarity have been key, and to that end we’ve benefited greatly from our collaboration with SOCIAM partners at the University of Oxford Computer Science Department, the Oxford e-Research Centre, and the University of Edinburgh Informatics Department. In particular, we should emphasise that our book distils the excellent work of dozens of researchers across the project, although there could only be four names on the cover.”
The new book is the fullest and most complete discussion of social machines yet written. It is authored by Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt (Trustee of the Web Science Trust), Dr Kieron O’Hara, Professor David De Roure and Professor Dame Wendy Hall and is in the Lecture Notes in Social Networks series. It describes the set of tools and techniques developed within SOCIAM for investigating, constructing and facilitating social machines, considers the ethical issues relating to privacy and trust, and speculates on future research trends.
The SOCIAM project, which was directed by Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt, ran from 2012-18 and was funded by the EPSRC.
Jan 11, 2019 | News, Publications, WSTNet Lab
The Dagstuhl report is a document which details the findings of 10 years of Web Science. Named after the ‘Perspectives Workshops’ held in Dagstuhl, June 2018, the report seeks to scope the main impacts that the discipline has formed over the years. These have been highlighted and discussed by a wide interdisciplinary team, with backgrounds in Computer Science, Sociology, Philosophy and Law.
The discourse of the report begins with the foundations of Web science, which took place shortly after the creation of the World Wide Web. It continues by discussing the present role of the discipline, detailing the many applications and relevance it has to modern society and technology. Finally, and arguably most importantly, the report debates the future of Web Science and the actions that community must take in order to preserve it’s original vision.
The report concludes by emphasising that the role of Web Science remains vital in a modern world. Given the complex and rapidly evolving relationship between society and technology, research in this area remains both relevant and critical. This is especially the case in a developing world where the Web has increased impact on daily lives, which is predicted to increase globally in coming years.
The report is available online.
