Produsage Communities

Athens.
Next up at WebSci '09 is Ethan Katsh, whose focus is on online dispute resolution. Disputes are a major online phenomenon, and as Fisher and Ury suggested even in 1983, "conflict is a growth industry". Dispute resolution also makes for a very useful case study for Web science, Ethan suggests - and he notes that many of the trends identified at this conference may also cause further disputes.

Last year alone, eBay handled some 40 million disputes (making it 'the largest small claims tribunal in the world'); ICANN handled some 25,000 disputes over its 100 million domain names in ten years, Wikipedia has instituted a broad range of dispute reolution processes and Second Life with its 5.5 billion Linden Dollars in circulation has started to generate a number of virtual property rules to manage its operations. Technology, then, is a great dispute generator, as a byproduct of online transactions and online relationships, but also of the increasing value of information, the brader distribution of information, the growing range of virtual goods and property, the increasing creative activity, the increasing complexity, and the accelerating pace of change.

Athens.
After the rather unruly cultural panel, WebSci '09 has now moved on to the next keynote, by Noshir Contractor. His theme is the application of Web science to social networks, and he begins by noting some of the experimental mobile tools now available for social networking. The Web in general enables us to communicate and collaborate with any one at any time, but what is necessary are tools that enable us to identify who it is that we should be or want to be collaborating with. This is where social network analysis and Web science comes in.

Athens.
Up next in this WebSci '09 session is Barbie Clarke, who shifts our attention to the social side of social media. It's well known that adolescents are using social networking sites to maintain friendships and explore identity, of course; Sonia Livingstone and Mimi Ito in particular have done some important work on this on both sides of the Atlantic. But things are also changing constantly, and further research is needed.

Most social networking research has looked at older adolescents, but children are going online at increasingly younger ages; in developed nations, there are many 10-14-year-olds using such sites for bulding friendships and exploring their identities now, at a time when they are just reaching puberty. Indeed, puberty is an important point - it is a time of transition, not least also as kids change school around this time, and using digital technology and going online may now also be part of this modern rite of passage: this may now be the time that kids get their first mobile phones and/or computers. The London School of Economics' Mobile Youth report found some 59% of British kids using social network sites, in fact.

Athens.
The next speaker at WebSci '09 is Kieran O'Hara, who begins by noting the perception of an increase in the activity of extremist groups on the Web, but with very little clear actual evidence supporting that perception. (Extremism is defined here as living in great tension within an embedding society.) How do extreme ideas - for example of a religious kind - spread on the Web?

One approach to this is to view this - with David Hume - as a marketplace of religious ideas, in which the most extreme are the most visible. But against this, Adam Smith suggests that there is also a drive to the centre in the contest of religious ideas, with the aim to attract a larger number of followers. There may be, in fact, a church/sect cycle, and Kieran points to the Mormons as a former sect which has become an established church, while new more extreme splinter groups have also hived off from this church in recent time. Religious moderation means a lower cost of participation for church members, while extremism means higher costs, but also greater cohesion and contribution from the smaller number of committed supporters.

Athens.
Up next at WebSci '09 is Patricia Victor, who begins by noting the growth in recommendation systems, including, for example, the advanced functionality on Amazon and in other e-commerce applications. Some 60% of Netflix users, for example, base their viewing on recommendations, and Netflix has offered a US$10m prize for an algorithm that improves its recommendation system by 10%.

There are two classes of recommendation systems: systems which are content-based and systems which are collaborative filtering-based. The latter focusses on similarities in the rating behaviour of users, and trust-based systems are often based on such algorithms. Epinions offers such a social trust network, and also allows users to evaluate other users by placing them in their network of trust, thereby conferring particular importance on these users' trust ratings. This also alleviates the 'cold start' problem with new users; it provides more reliable and accurate recommendations and leads to a kind of trust propagation through the network.

Athens.
For the first round of paper sessions here at WebSci '09, I've chosen a session on trust and distrust. Having just watched people juggle USB drives for the best part of 15 minutes, we finally start with a presentation by Dave Karpf. His interest is in the Web's impact on collective action for Internet-mediated organisations - and he suggests that the emergent mobile Web wll be of particular importance in this context.

Mobile Web-enabled devices enable new forms of collective action; rating and reputation systems attach track record data to individual participants - when the two meet, this has potentially radical implications for what uses become possible. Reputation in this context refers to complex, context-dependent community assessments; it plays a crucial role in solving collective action problems, and introduces what Axelrod has called a 'Shadow of the Future': they lead people to do well for others as they make visible the contributions of each participant (and introduce possible future repercussions for those who fail to put in). This is visible for example in communities like eBay or Slashdot, which both promote positive and sanction negative contributions through their reputation systems. Even Google's PageRank can be understood as a reputation system: PageRank measures, indirectly, reputation.

Never go on holidays... Looks like a few days into my holiday on the Sunshine Coast, one of the electrical storms sweeping through Brisbane these days knocked out the server, even in spite of various forms of surge protection. Ah well - a motherboard replacement and some serious fiddling with Linux later (massive thanks to Nic Suzor for pointing me to the tip that enabled my successful necromancy), here we are again.

And while we're here, I might as well note that the audio and Powerpoint from my Interactive Minds presentation on 27 November are now online. I'm afraid the audio quality is, shall we say, 'for collectors only', but here it is, for what it's worth. This end-of-year IM event aimed to highlight trends in 2008 and predictions for 2009, and regular readers of this blog will recognise a few of my recurring obsessions. Many thanks to Jen Storey for the invite.

Sydney.
The last afternoon at the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress begins with a panel session on the future of advertising. Paddy Douneen, National Advertising Director for Fairfax Integrated Solutions, is opening the debate by highlighting the difficulties established media companies are having in shifting advertising from traditional to online spaces, especially given the uncertainties of the current economic climate. He says that advertising in some traditional media is still very strong, especially now that car manufacturers and department stores have increasing backlogs of stock to clear because consumer demand is slowing.

Sydney.
My talk was next at the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress, and seemed to go down pretty well - I had been somewhat worried about getting booed off the stage by the broadcasters in the room, seeing as I was pointing out the dark clouds on the horizon for them. Here's the Powerpoint, and the paper is online, too - hope the audio recording worked, too! the audio turned out a little noisy once again, but it's better than nothing...

Sydney.
Following on from the last two very informative sessions here at the Australasian Media & Broadcasting Congress, we have a social networking panel. Akamai's Stuart Spiteri kicks off by asking about the impact of continuing change, and Andrew Cordwell answers that this is indeed difficult. For MySpace, local people talking about local issues will always continue; the challenge is to build on this in a more global fashion, and to connect these levels. Francisco Cordero also points to the importance of continuing to develop the technology.