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Chapter Copyright 2009 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved.
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Web Science: Motivation, Goals and Contributions
Benjamin Heitmann
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Benjamin Heitmann slide of 18
Introduction
Society today is dependent on the WebAffects areas besides computer
science: politics
law and economics media and the arts
very different situation 10/15 years ago
Web Science asks: Should we be studying the Web by itself?
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Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Benjamin Heitmann slide of 18
Outline
Motivation:
Why Web Science?
Goals and definitions:
Definitions of Web Science and intended goals
Contributions:
tangible results from Web Science
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Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Benjamin Heitmann slide of 18
Why is Web Science necessary?
The Web affects most areas of today’s society
Society is dependent on the Web
The Web is the substrate for our society
Computer Science is no longer enough to understand the Web
Many disciplines need to contribute to this understanding
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© Flickr user “denn”
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Society on the Web: Media
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“A number of proposals have been put forward which would avoid this in whole or in part and which would, we argue, be at least as effective as Nama in laying the ground for such a banking system. These models have been well discussed through a variety of blogs on the web and in the mainstream media.”
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
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Society on the Web (2)
Dot-Com Bubble:
Bust effects whole economy in 2000/2001
Digital Rights Management: Amazon deletes book under customers nose
Privacy: facebook apps (e.g. quizzes) steal and sell users data
Freedom of speech: Web 2.0 sites used to enable and spy on Iranian opposition
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Society on the Web (3)
Politics: Obama campaign was won with small donations (less then 100 dollars) given through Web site
Humanities and Arts:
The rise of network culture:
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“the network has become the dominant cultural logic”
“Networked Publics”, Kazys Varnelis (Editor), 2008
© Shepard Fairey (obeygiant.com)
© http://networkedbook.org
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Benjamin Heitmann slide of 18
Defining Web Science
Different views of Web Science and its goals:
1. Systems-level view of the web
2. Study of interplay between engineering and social factors
3. Measuring the web
4. Predicting the future web5. Outline for educating the next generation
6. Encourage collaboration
7. Establishing a new scientific method
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Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Benjamin Heitmann slide of 18
Systems-level view of the Web
Goal: Holistic view of the web
No partitioning
No delegation of research on one area to only one discipline
Problems usually can not be solved by just one discipline
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© Web Science Research Initiative
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Benjamin Heitmann slide of 18
Web Science Process Model
Goal: Study interplay between engineering and social factors.
Increase in complexity:
result is transition from micro to macro effects
Examples: first 8 years of the Web
Wikipedia
Myspace, Twitter and Facebook
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© Law
rence Lessig
Source:“Web science: an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the web”, Hendler, Shadboldt, Hall, Berners-Lee, Weitzner, Communications of the ACM (2008)
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Benjamin Heitmann slide of 18
Measuring the Web
Goal: gather empirical data and statistics about the Web or parts of it
Goal: create models for different properties of the Web
In and Out-degree distributionCharacterising connectivity of
pages on the webPower laws for incoming links,
e.g. to blogsGrowth: 7 million pages a day
(2005)
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Source: “Graph structure in the Web”, Broder, Kumar et al.
© C
lay Shirky
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Predicting the future Web
Goal: predict why technologies are successful on the Web
Combine quantitative and qualitative statements for predictions
Next big thing after twitter: Augmented reality?
Will Linked Data take off?
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Could the Web exist without TBL inventing it?
© U
niversity of Southamptin
© Wired magazine
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Benjamin Heitmann slide of 18
Web Science as Education
Goal: Develop a curriculum for teaching a combination of disciplines.
Next generation of researchers will have a unified perspective.
Other disciplines which started as interdisciplinary approaches: computer science
life sciences
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Encouraging collaboration
Goal: provide venues and incentives for researchers from different disciplines to collaborate.
It is hard to get funding for interdisciplinary research
Approaches combining more then two disciplines are rare
Current venues: annual Web Science conference
workshops, e.g. at WWW2008
WSRI Journal
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© Web Science Research Initiative, both pictures
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
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Establishing a new scientific method
Goal: develop a new language and methodology for making statements about the Web on a systems level
language: scientists from the different disciplines must be able to communicate with each other
methodology: focus on empirical basis
take quantitative and qualitative findings into account
allow normative and extrapolating methods
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Source: Futures studies article on Wikipedia
Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
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Contributions of Web Science (1)
Quantitative measurements of the Web:e.g. “Graph structure in the Web”, Broder, Kumar et al.
Social Networking Patterns: Social Drivers for creating and sustaining communities“Theories of communication networks”, Monge, Contractor
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Source: Noshir Contractor, slides at http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/sna-workshop/documents/20076NoshMaryland.pdf
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Contributions of Web Science (2)
Qualitative case studies (just a selection)Philosophy: “The Devil’s Long Tail: Religious Moderation and
Extremism on the Web”, O'Hara, Stevens (2009)
applying the Long Tail theory to religious markets on the Web
Anthropology: "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace", Boyd (2007)
Initial user population shapes character of social networks, not just technical features
Web Science Process Model: “Introducing new features to Wikipedia - Case studies for Web science”, Schindler, Vrandecic (2009)
How the Wikipedia community influences the features of the Wikipedia software and vice versa
Governance: “Designing effective regulation for the Dark side of the Web”, Richter, Brown (2009)
Overview of government regulation, proposal of using NGOs for more effective regulation
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Addendum
Acknowledgements: My visit to the WebScience Summer school was funded by: Unit for Information Mining and Retrieval (UIMR)
Data Intensive Infrastructures Unit (UDI2)
Show of hands for collaborationOther questions?Starting points for literature:
“Web science: an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the web”, Hendler, Shadboldt, Hall, Berners-Lee, Weitzner, Communications of the ACM (2008)
Web Science conference proceedings (websci09.org)
http://webscience.org/publications/
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