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Tomnod is a project owned by a Colorado-based satellite company ‘DigitalGlobe’ that uses crowdsourcing to identify objects and places in satellite images. They aim to utilize the power of the crowd to increase the accuracy of satellite images by asking users to join the campaign and tag aeroplanes, helicopters, etc. they see on the online satellite images. The user will be shown the satellite images of the globe and asked to tag what they believe it on the image. With the high population joining in the identification of different planes, it can increase the precision of where things are located.

Secondary to this, campaigns are held on the platform to utilize the crowd to source for the identification and discovery of certain objects through the satellite images and also for certain rescues. For example, to look for two missing hikers on Mount Everest. The crowd can work together in search for suspected locations of the hikers and collectively, increase the speed of the search and effectiveness of identification. Some of the projects include searching for the tomb of Genghis Khan and mapping damage after the Typhoon Haiyan.

The most fascinating campaign of Tomnod to me, was the crowd-sourcing campaign for the identification of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, starting in March 2014. Tomnod opened up the satellite images for public viewing and 2.3 million people took part in this crowdsourcing appeal to find missing Malaysian Airlines flight. Individual internet users collectively scanned more than 24,000 sq km of satellite imagery to help locate the missing aircraft. It was reported that over 650,000 “objects of interest” had been tagged by users.

In my opinion, the satellite images and crowdsourcing campaigns offered on Tomnod are very useful and beneficial to the whole world. The concept to utilize the power of the crowd to search together for missing flights and people, as well as to identify the root of certain natural disasters could help to gain results quicker and more effectively. Although the outcomes of the campaigns are not as effective, I still believe that there is a future to Tomnod and that one day, it will be a powerful crowdsourcing platform that we and governments can use, for improving the world.

So, what are your opinions towards Tomnod? Do you have positive views towards their crowdsourcing campaigns? How effective do you think Tomnod could be with their satellite images and crowd identifications? Would you personally be involved in their crowdsourcing campaigns as it is for a social good- contributing in the search of the missing flight?  Do you have any other ideas towards how Tomnod could be used by the population, alternative to identifying objects in the world?

Sources

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/14/tomnod-online-search-malaysian-airlines-flight-mh370

http://crowdsourcingweek.com/malaysian-plane-crowdsourcing-search-signals-rise-of-the-digital-humanitarian/

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Wikipedia is one of the most classical and popularly-known form of peer production. It is an online encyclopedia where volunteers collectively and collaboratively create, share and classify articles in which anyone could edit. The main criticism mentioned in the assigned HBC is the accuracy and reliability of the article contents on Wikipedia, including the lack of expertise within the content-production process. I was interested in the reliability issue of Wikipedia and as I was researching, I came across an interesting article.

It was presented that robots are writing more articles for Wikipedia than any single individual in this world! An increasing number of entries on Wikipedia are being authored by automated software, or bots, that pull raw information from databases, then use algorithms to generate text in standardised templates.The bot writes and posts the Wikipedia articles automatically. The most prolific wikibot, as mentioned in the article is called “Lsybot”. It is a single bot programme created by a Swedish university administrator, Sverker Johnansson whom has written a total of 2.7 million articles, meaning on general up to 10,000 Wikipedia articles per day. It is responsible for 8.5% of the articles available on the system!

In my opinion, the effectiveness of using bots to create Wikipedia articles can be disputed. On one hand, as wikibots gather information from different databases, it can be argued that it brings higher accuracy and reliability to the information presented. It also produces articles at a much faster pace than human individuals, with lower chances of human errors such as spelling and grammar mistakes. However, I feel that this is affecting the initial operating model of Wikipedia. As a peer production system, the idea of Wikipedia is to gain the collaborative power of individuals to collectively gather knowledge and contribute articles of information. With wikibots, this is no longer the same as robots are beginning to contribute more than human and could be editing the source of information we establish. It also poses a problem of whether it is correct to allow robots to design the information in which we human “learn” knowledge from.

Would you agree with Johnansson, the creator of Lysbot, that having robots to write Wikipedia articles can increase the reliability and accuracy of article contents?  Do you support this practice? Do you feel that wikibots are removing the benefits of peer production and would soon pull Wikipedia away from the pure peer production and open source framework? Is it an argument of short-term to long-term benefit? Can you think of any other possible consequences of having robots to write Wikipedia?

Sources:

http://www.popsci.com/article/science/bot-has-written-more-wikipedia-articles-anybody

http://news.discovery.com/tech/robotics/wikipedia-bot-writes-10000-articles-a-day-140715.htm

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The HBC discussed Wikipedia. The main criticism stated was the accuracy and reliability of the contents however, some critics had argued that the co-editing feature of peer production increases the credibility. Fallis (2008) revealed that the reliability of Wikipedia is positively comparable to traditional encyclopedias. The second article, A Natural Experiment at Chinese Wikipedia concluded that there is a relationship between group size and the incentive to contribute, due to social effects. Tang et al. (2012) proposed that exposure is the major incentive for contributors and that exposure is impacted by group size. However, Shun et al (2011) suggested that the knowledge-sharing intention is influenced directly by attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control instead.

The interview with Marten Mickos implied that the key for success is to encourage continuous participation from external programmers. Dahlander and Magnusson (2005) suggested that firms working on open source can influence their community through five main mechanisms of subtle control and MySQL had executed all five denoting an effective approach. Lastly, the “private-collective” innovation model is when the innovator uses his own resources for public goods innovation. The authors assumed that innovators would benefit more than the free-riders therefore innovation would happen only when rewards exceed costs. However, recent research suggested that egoism and altruism are the dominant reason for engaging in private-collective innovations (Benbunan-Fich and Koufaris, 2013).

The use of social media and social networks within the educational field is my subject of interests. Wests (2012) proposed that collaboration tools such as blogs, wikis, social media and video games help to improve education. Firstly, online blogs allow students to share academic-related information and express their own opinions in a more creative manner. Our class is a good example of effectively utilizing blogs for learning. Secondly, the usage of technological devices within classroom activities could foster greater amounts of communication between students, for example online polling. Thirdly, social media networking sites like Facebook encourages broader student participation.

The two mini-case examples are: Twiducate and Edmodo, which are both free microblogging sites designed particularly for educators. Twiducate is a social network platform that allows school educators to create a private social network with their students and Edmodo connects teachers, students and parents all over the world to collaborate on assignments and discover new resources. Twiducate is ‘Twitter-like’ and Edmodo is ‘Facebook-like’ format. I personally prefer Edmodo over Twiducate.

Similarities

1. Free of charge
2. Teachers have full control over the manipulation of content
3. A niche educational focus hence features are tailored for learning purposes
4. Requires high levels of commitment, time and effort for successful implementation

Differences

1. Twiducate has a higher level of privacy as teachers can establish private networks whilst the online classroom of Edmodo is open to public
2. The frequency of collaboration is higher at Twiducate
3. Edmodo has over 43 million users whereas Twiducate has only about 8 million users. Therefore the reach and social benefit users can derive is higher at Edmodo
4. Twiducate is written ‘by teachers for teachers’ and Edmodo is written by two ‘techies’ meaning that the quality and user experience of the site should be better at Edmodo

Sources

• Benbunan-Fich, R., Koufaris, M., (2013) “Public contributions to private-collective systems: the case of social bookmarking”, Internet Research, 23(2), 2013, pp. 183-203.
• Darrell M. West (2012). How Blogs, Social Media and Video Games improve education. Studies at Brookings.
• Fallis, D. (2008), Toward an epistemology ofWikipedia. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci., 59: 1662–1674.
• Linus Dahlander and Mats G. Magnusson (2005). Relationships between open source software companies and communities: Observations from Nordic firms. Volume 34, Issue 4, May 2005, Pages 481–493.
• Shun-Chuan Ho, Ping-Ho Ting, Dong-Yih Bau, and Chun-Chung Wei (2011). Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. 14(9): 541-545.
• Tang, Q. Gu, B. and Andrew B. Whinston (2012) Content Contribution for Revenue Sharing and Reputation in Social Media: A Dynamic Structural Model. Journal of Management Information Systems, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 41-76, Fall 2012.

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This weeks topic: Diffusion and Social Influence

Diffusion is the spreading of something more widely and social influence occurs when an individual’s emotions, opinions, or behaviors are affected by others. One immediate case I could relate to this topic is the current demonstration in my country, the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong. In short, it is a protest to call for democracy within Hong Kong. Please click on the link below if you wish to gain more information about the starting of this protest: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/30/-sp-hong-kong-umbrella-revolution-pro-democracy-protests

I believe that social media took up a very huge role to diffuse the information regarding the protest globally as it attracted worldwide attention towards the strike. It alerted to worldwide support such as supporting protests in San Francisco, as well as in the Hague, Netherlands. As I am in Rotterdam and am not able to check the HK news frequently, I found out about this protest initially through Facebook. My news feed was spammed with related videos and photos uploaded or shared by my university friends in Hong Kong and as I began to share these videos out on my wall as well, I realized that I am helping to diffuse this information on the network. After 2 hours into the protest, information were broadly available through related hashtags like #OccupyCentral and thousands of photos were already uploaded onto media such as Instagram. Therefore, I was surprised that the diffusion of such big events was faster through social media. For discussion, I would like to ask whether you guys agree that diffusion is faster through social media. Do you think information regarding movements like the Umbrella Revolution should be widely spread across the world through social media? Are there any possibilities that people were misusing the media to communicate an exaggerated version of the event as it is not officially reported by authorities?

In addition, there began the notion of turning Facebook profile picture into the yellow ribbon to show support and this attracted millions of people attention towards the protest within one day. Events were created on Facebook to ask for people’s participation into the movement and friends were tagging each other to join into the protests. Poster designing contest were opened to gain public participation into the notion of the protest. I personally do not think that this is the best method to ask for people’s participation as it might not be the person’s true will to join and could be influenced by friends to join it as they see it on their wall. With social contagion in mind, the umbrella revolution related information on your Facebook could have indirectly affected you to join in the protest. Hence, would you agree that social influence added to the spread of this event as “peer pressure” could have made people more aware of the event? Do you think it is ethical for social media to diffuse the protest information so quickly?

With the above video, it was identified that Twitter and hashtags played a big part in spreading the movement. Do you think that the diffusion of this event would be the same if social media was not used as a primary tool? A live broadcast of the protest situation in Hong Kong could be viewed through the internet, do you think this would have a faster diffusion rate than Facebook?

Just to add to the discussion topic, a phone application called “Firechat” was created in sync with the demonstration. It is an app for connecting people together through Wifi and bluetooth capabilities in order to ensure connection in case of blockage in the public network. Devices connect to other devices, and anyone can become a node in the network with an anonymous screen name. In the first two days of last week, there were 1.5 million tweets with the hashtag #OccupyCentral, but over 2 million FireChat sessions, each lasting an average of two minutes, forty-one seconds. Do you think app like “Firechat” add to the diffusion of information? If yes, how is it possible? Other than the mentioned social media use for the diffusion of Umbrella Revolution in this writing, could you think of any other ways or reveal other ways in which the revolution was diffused?

Last but not least, out of curiosity, how long did it take you to find out about the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong, being a student studying in Rotterdam?

Sources

http://www.dw.de/hong-kongs-umbrella-revolution-intensifies-on-social-media/a-17961254

http://betabeat.com/2014/10/firechat-the-app-that-fueled-hong-kongs-umbrella-revolution/

http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1603858/umbrella-revolution-designers-come-logos-occupy-central-protests?page=all

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In this week’s lecture, we focused on the analysis aspect of “Online Social Networks.”
We looked at the different ways in which we could carry out analysis, such as closeness centrality and betweenness centrality, in order to look for who is the most influential or powerful within a particular network. A question was raised in class about the purpose of these type of analysis. For example, how it can be used in context and why would they use it. In my opinion, social network analysis can be used by businesses to better market their products and services by knowing exactly the profiles of their target consumers and thus manipulate their interests into the company and influence purchasing patterns.

Firstly, a research at the University of California used software to investigate the emotional content of one billion Facebook posts over two years. They came up with a particular formula to calculate for one person’s emotional expression. They found that there may be a large-scale spillover in online networks in that what people feel and say in one place could spread very quickly to many parts of the globe and could the spread of emotion could be on the very same day. This means that the emotional contagion power is very strong. I personally agree with this because we learnt that networks can connect people to people quickly.

In this discussion, do you guys think that there is actually a relationship between your emotions and the items that you post on Facebook? Do you agree with the authors of this research that the spillover effect of online networks are so large in that someone living across the globe could indirectly get emotionally affected by your Facebook posts? Would this be over exaggerating?

In addition to the topic of emotion contagion, there had been a current issue within Facebook’s news feed experiment to control people’s emotions. Facebook carried out a secret study involving 689,000 users in which friends’ postings were moved to influence moods. The study concluded that the “emotions expressed by friends, via online social networks, influence our own moods, constituting, to our knowledge, the first experimental evidence for massive-scale emotional contagion via social networks” (Booth, 2014). Simply, Facebook’s experiment reviewed that they could successfully affect the emotions of their users by manipulating the type of posts they can see on Facebook.

This video summarizes the experiment. I think this experiment is unethical as it is affecting the feelings of people which could lead to bad consequences. With this case, I would like to ask whether you guys believe that Facebook is allowed to manipulate your emotions? Was this experiment ethical? And are you surprised with the outcome of Facebook’s experiment? Can you come up with some creative ideas on how you could test the emotional contagion effect on other social networking sites like Twitter?

Source

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0090315

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-users-emotions-news-feeds

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/poll/2014/jun/30/facebook-secret-mood-experiment-social-network