Social Computing

This report is furnished to the Air Force Office of Scientific Research as the final deliverable for AFOSR Grant FA9550-­‐12-­‐1-­‐0097, “The Role of Benevolence in Trust of Autonomous Systems.” This report provides a summary of the research and related activities performed with the support of this grant and key results, including pre-­‐print copies of the peer-­‐reviewed publications and related material. Without reliable and robust methods for assessing the trustworthiness of intelligent, autonomous systems, the issue of trust has become one of the most significant obstacles to broad use of autonomy technology by DoD and other agencies. However, the impact of the research described in this report supports creation of computational methods that create a bridge to future engineering of trustworthy autonomous systems. The core objectives of this research were (1) to operationalize the quality of “benevolence” and understand how it contributes to well-­‐calibrated trust of, and reliance upon, autonomous systems, and (2) to investigate portrayal of trust-­‐related attributes in the human-­‐machine interface. Significant headway was achieved on key topics, including some notable results. Key accomplishments discussed in this report include: (1) the formulation of benevolence as a complex “belief structure” with antecedent beliefs having important semantic, temporal, causal and other interrelationships; (2) the mapping of a portion of this belief structure to measurable internal states of autonomous systems, thereby potentially creating new opportunities for assessment of trustworthiness of such systems; (3) the obtaining of empirical evidence in support of the proposition that previous psychological concepts of interpersonal human trust are applicable to trust in autonomous systems, including the role of personality and situation in modulating the role and importance of certain beliefs; (4) the creation of a theory of a “Human Social Interface” which, when expressed in systems engineering terms, provides guidance for machine portrayal of trust-­‐related qualities in human-­‐machine social interaction; (5) the design and implementation of a software prototype based on the Human Social Interface theory that provides a basis for future experimentation and evaluation. This project resulted in eight peer-­‐reviewed publications and sixteen presentations in scientific venues, meetings with distinguished visitors, and other in support of technology transition opportunities within DoD and to industry. Many new research questions were generated and there remains considerable work to do to fully understand the role of benevolence with respect to intelligent autonomous systems. Overall, the theoretical foundation for trustworthiness of autonomous systems is immature and remains an important area of focus for multiple disciplines.

This class introduces philosophical ethics through contemporary issues concerning computing technology. Topics include algorithmic bias and fairness, data privacy, cybersecurity, surveillance, free speech, automation, and artificial intelligence. A running theme will be how technologies are situated within social and political systems, and what kinds of ethical implications that brings.
In her recent book Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O’Neil writes:

Data is not going away. Nor are computers—much less mathematics. Predictive models are, increasingly, the tools we will be relying on to run our institutions, deploy our resources, and manage our lives. But as I’ve tried to show throughout this book, these models are constructed not just from data but from the choices we make about which data to pay attention to—and which to leave out. Those choices are not just about logistics, profits, and efficiency. They are fundamentally moral.

Computing technology is here to stay, and the decisions we make concerning how to use this technology really are, as O’Neil says fundamentally moral decisions.

The system provides a background on depression, use of social media platforms for prediction and analysis using machine learning and deep learning algorithms. The system monitors the social media activities of each person and predicts their mental health factors such as depression, anxiety, stress, etc. This system also uses real time online social media data by exploring the parallelism between the users' mental health and the content they post on their social media handle. This system could be used by mentors such as teachers, doctors, etc to acquire a weekly analysis of the person’s stress levels, thereby helping in providing consultation accordingly.
Keywords: Social computing, healthcare, artificial intelligence, deep learning, data analysis, natural language processing, convolutional neural network

This is an academic literature report, reviews social computing via an online technology contextual lens.  The report has reviewed over 20 journal articles and conference papers dating from 2003 to 2015. Its aim was to review the most insightful, intriguing and up to date knowledge sources currently researching social computing across the world and then highlight four key themes: folksonomy, user centric, socialising online and technology decentralization.

A grid computing environment provides a type of distributed computation that is unique because it is not centrally managed and it has the capability to connect heterogeneous resources. A grid system provides location-independent access to the resources and services of geographically distributed machines. An essential ingredient for supporting location-independent computations is the ability to discover resources that have been requested by the users. Because the number of grid users can increase and the grid environment is continuously changing, a scheduler that can discover decentralized resources is needed. Grid resource scheduling is considered to be a complicated, NP-hard problem because of the distribution of resources, the changing conditions of resources, and the unreliability of infrastructure communication. Various artificial intelligence algorithms have been proposed for scheduling tasks in a computational grid. This paper uses the imperialist competition algorithm (ICA) to address the problem of independent task scheduling in a grid environment, with the aim of reducing the makespan. Experimental results compare ICA with other algorithms and illustrate that ICA finds a shorter makespan relative to the others.  Moreover, it converges quickly, finding its optimum solution in less time than the other algorithms.

The World Wide Web, and online social networks in particular,
have increased connectivity between people such that
information can spread to millions of people in a matter of
minutes. This form of online collective contagion has provided
many benets to society, such as providing reassurance
and emergency management in the immediate aftermath of
natural disasters. However, it also poses a potential risk to
vulnerableWeb users who receive this information and could
subsequently come to harm. One example of this would
be the spread of suicidal ideation in online social networks,
about which concerns have been raised. In this paper we
report the results of a number of machine classiers built
with the aim of classifying text relating to suicide on Twitter.
The classier distinguishes between the more worrying
content, such as suicidal ideation, and other suicide-related
topics such as reporting of a suicide, memorial, campaigning
and support. It also aims to identify
ippant references
to suicide. We built a set of baseline classiers using lexical,
structural, emotive and psychological features extracted
from Twitter posts. We then improved on the baseline classi
ers by building an ensemble classier using the Rotation
Forest algorithm and a Maximum Probability voting classi
cation decision method, based on the outcome of base
classiers. This achieved an F-measure of 0.728 overall (for
7 classes, including suicidal ideation) and 0.69 for the suicidal
ideation class. We summarise the results by re
ecting on
the most signicant predictive principle components of the
suicidal ideation class to provide insight into the language
used on Twitter to express suicidal ideation.

Using engaging and entertaining learning tools and techniques in and outside the classroom has become imperative in order to ensure, amongst others, subject-matter retention for the scholars of today. These technologies are not restricted to enriching course content alone and can also stimulate and encourage students to participate in collaborative learning processes. In this paper, the use of YouTube © is described to encourage collaborative learning and how this innovative learning tool can enhance students’ motivation to gain computer knowledge. The research findings are supported with outcomes from student questionnaires. The research found that integrating YouTube © into undergraduate education will be beneficial for improving Information Systems (IS) knowledge and competence.

Digital humanities, computer history, and digital agriculture are the most striking evidence of the widespread penetration of computer technology into all spheres of human life. November 10-12, 2021 Moscow hosted the 7th HISTELCON International Conference-the flagship conference of the IEEE European Chapter, which brings together more than 400,000 individual members working in more than 40 IEEE communities in the field of new technologies and their impact on social and economic development humanity. The IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology (SSIT) is among them, which was founded in 1972. The main area of interest for SSIT members is to maintain a professional dialogue on the study of the impact of new technologies, particularly digital technologies, on the development of humanity and their relationship with society's social life. The motto of the IEEE: Developing Technology for Humanity. Science and society, science and technology policy, communications in science, mobility of scientists, sociology of science, women in science, assessment of the activities of scientists and research teams, science and education, social problems of modern technologies-these are the topics that were discussed at HISTELCON-2021. Holding the HISTELCON-2021 conference in Moscow is a sign of respect for the outstanding achievements of Russian and Soviet science. Seventy years ago, in December 2021, the first Soviet computers M-1 and MESM were created. The Soviet Union was one of the three countries that were the first to enter the era of computer technology. The conference was also timed to coincide with the 90th anniversary of the Institute for the History of Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, celebrated in 2022. Most of the reports presented at the conference considered the development of computer technologies and their applications in dynamics, how their achievements could affect the future.

The last few years have seen a substantial growth in online communities such as MySpace and Facebook. In order to survive, online community systems must increase and enhance social interaction and participation. This chapter analyzes participation in new online communities, by a combination of socio-technical perspective and a Human-computer interaction perspective. Data were collected in 2007through the use of questionnaire and qualitative from five sample groups in Norway – four online communities and one national sample of Internet users. The results show that online communities attract like-minded people. Most visits have a clear social purpose, but the level of participation differs with respect to user characteristics and community type. Participation in terms of user-generated content (UGC) differs greatly, depending on the medium used. Most users do not contribute audio-visual UGC. Text is still the main UGC. Possible future research and socio-technical design implications are discussed.

The simple sites of the past web environment (termed as web 1.0) have given way to complex sites with confusing content in today’s Web 2.0 environment. Usability issues surrounding Web 2.0 emphasize simplifying content on the GUIs, which need to be presented as infotainment – a combination of information and entertainment. Web 3.0 is already emerging on the horizon. The massive amount of user-generated content on Web 3.0 needs to be continuously and dynamically organized. Designers are still using heuristics of Web 1.0 to cope with the requirements of complex Web 3.0 environments. Questions arise as to whether Nielsen’s original set of heuristics continue to be valid for Web 2.0 environments. Web 2.0 category sites like YouTube are found to obey only two of the ten Nielsen heuristics but yet continue to be one of the most popular websites in the world today. What possibly can explain this is the starting point of this paper’s posit. This paper makes an attempt to examine the relevance of Web 1.0 heuristics in the Web 2.0 environment, in the context of Indian users of music sharing sites. The bottom of the pyramid paradigm can be used to explain the user behavior of the large mass of Indian users. This paper also attempts to project what kind of heuristics are likely to evolve for Web 3.0 environment based on the analysis of qualitative user behavior data collected on a music website.

Easy Home or Home automation plays a very important role in modern era because of its flexibility in using it at different places with high precision which will save money and time by decreasing human hard work. Prime focus of this technology is to control the household equipment's like light, fan, door, AC etc. automatically. This research paper has detailed information on Home Automation and Security System using Arduino, GSM and how we can control home appliances using Android application. Whenever a person will enter into the house then the count of the number of persons entering in the house will be incremented, in Home Automation mode applicances will be turned on whereas in security light will be turned on along with the alarm. The count of the number of persons entering the house is also displayed on the LCD screen. In Home Automation mode when the room will become empty i.e. the count of persons reduces to zero then the applicances will be turned off making the system power efficient. Moreover a person can control his home appliances by using an android application present in his mobile phone which will reduce the human hard work. At the same time if anyone enters while security mode is on a SMS will be sent to house owner's mobile phone which will indicate the presence of a person inside the house.The alarm can be turned of using SMS or Android application.

The increasing threat of social engineers targeting social media channels to advance their attack effectiveness on company data has seen many organizations introducing initiatives to better understand these vulnerabilities. This paper examines concerns of social engineering through social media within the enterprise and explores countermeasures undertaken to stem ensuing risk. Also included is an analysis of existing social media security policies and guidelines within the public and private sectors.

El paradigma de Agentes de Software se ha convertido en un elemento de utilidad en el análisis
y diseño de nuevas aplicaciones sobre todo en el contexto Web y en Inteligencia Artificial
Distribuida (DAI). Su ventaja principal es poder abstraer del dominio de la aplicación aquellos
objetos que deben exhibir una conducta autónoma, colaborativa, comunicativa, adaptable y
algunas veces inteligente y poder modelarlos con esas características. Esta ventaja marca un
avance significativo en cuanto a la forma como el diseñador de software representa una
solución. Sin embargo, por poseer características que lo diferencian de los sistemas
tradicionales orientado a objetos, el paradigma orientado a agentes de software requiere un
enfoque distinto de desarrollo. Es por lo que es necesario definir metodologías de desarrollo de
sistemas con agentes adaptadas a las características de ese paradigma, herramientas para el
modelado de agentes, extensión de lenguajes de modelado como UML para adaptarlo al diseño
con agentes, diseño de nuevos Frameworks y su aplicación en dominios específicos, lenguajes
de programación orientado a agentes, entre otros. El objetivo de este trabajo es identificar
requerimientos para el desarrollo de aplicaciones con agentes de software, presentar aspectos
metodológicos y de diseño que diferencien el paradigma de agentes del paradigma de objetos, y
desarrollar Web Agent Framework (WAF). WAF es un framework para el desarrollo de
componentes de software con agentes que facilitará la aplicación del paradigma de agentes en
el desarrollo de aplicaciones Web. En este trabajo, WAF será utilizado para desarrollar iWAgent:
un componente de software con agentes que será integrado a la aplicación Portafolio PLUS.
Portafolio PLUS es una herramienta para control de portafolios de inversión diseñada para
funcionar en ambientes Web que le permite a los inversores y corredores bursátiles controlar
sus operaciones de forma automatizada, delegando las actividades de control de portafolios y
compra y venta de acciones a iWAgent. iWAgent realizará actividades de forma autónoma,
controlando el factor Riesgo/Rendimiento de cada uno de los portafolios asociados a Portafolio
PLUS. Portafolio PLUS realizará las funciones de sitio Web, donde se ofrecen las
funcionalidades necesarias para que tanto los inversores como los corredores puedan obtener
información de sus portafolios, las acciones disponibles para comprar, opciones para vender
acciones, estadísticas de movimientos, entre otras. Portafolio PLUS se desarrolló utilizando
INSITE una metodología para aplicaciones Web que contempla el uso de componentes de
software en la aplicación.

Course Description: This course provides an applied, non-technical introduction to the methods and ideas of Computational Social Sciences. It discusses how new online data sources and the computational methods shed new light on old social science questions and ask brand new questions. It articulates on some of the ethical and privacy challenges of living in a world of big data and algorithmic decision making.

Using engaging and entertaining learning tools and techniques inside and outside the classroom has become imperative in order to ensure, amongst others, subject-matter retention for the scholars of today. These technologies are not restricted to enriching course content alone and can also stimulate and encourage students to participate in collaborative learning processes. In this paper, the use of Google Sites© is described to encourage collaborative learning. The research findings are supported with outcomes from student questionnaires. The research found that integrating Google Sites© into undergraduate education will be beneficial for improving Information Systems knowledge and competence.

The International Journal of Information Science & Techniques (IJIST) focuses on information systems science and technology coercing multitude applications of information systems in business administration, social science, biosciences, and humanities education, library sciences management, depiction of data and structural illustration, big data analytics, information economics in real engineering and scientific problems.

This journal provides a forum that impacts the development of engineering, education, technology management, information theories and application validation. It also acts as a path to exchange novel and innovative ideas about Information systems science and technology.

Over the last decade, the nature of cybercrime has transformed from naive vandalism to profit-driven, leading to the emergence of a global underground economy. A noticeable trend which has surfaced in this economy is the repeated use of forums to operate online stolen data markets. Using interaction data from three prominent carding forums: Shadowcrew, Cardersmarket and Darkmarket, this study sets out to understand why forums are repeatedly chosen to operate online stolen data markets despite numerous successful infiltrations by law enforcement in the past. Drawing on theories from criminology, social psychology, economics and network science, this study has identified four fundamental socio-economic mechanisms offered by carding forums: (1) formal control and coordination; (2) social networking; (3) identity uncertainty mitigation; (4) quality uncertainty mitigation. Together, they give rise to a sophisticated underground market regulatory system that facilitates underground trading over the Internet and thus drives the expansion of the underground economy.

The chapter aims to present and explain the concept of the smart organization. This concept arose from the need for organizations to respond dynamically to the changing landscape of a digital economy. A smart organization is understood to be both, internet-worked and knowledge-driven, therefore able to adapt to new organizational challenges rapidly, and sufficiently agile to create and exploit knowledge in response to opportunities of the digital age. The three networking dimensions of smart organizations, ICT-enabled virtuality, organizational teaming and knowledge hyper-linking are elaborated. This networking capability allows smart organizations to cope with complexity and with rapidly changing economic environments. The paper also shows how managing the smart organization requires a more ‘fuzzy’ approach to managing smart resources: people, information, knowledge, creativity. Research is also presented, mainly from the European perspective. It has been key to creating the conditions for organizations to become smart.

Social Network analysis focuses on patterns of relations between and among people, organizations, states, etc. It aims to describe networks of relations as fully as possible, identify prominent patterns in such networks, trace the flow of information through them, and discover what effects these relations and networks have on people and organizations. Social network analysis offers a very promising potential for analyzing human-human interactions in online communities (discussion boards, newsgroups, virtual organizations). This Tutorial provides an overview of this analytic technique and demonstrates how it can be used in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) research and practice, focusing especially on Computer Mediated Communication (CMC). This topic acquires particular importance these days, with the increasing popularity of social networking websites (e.g., youtube, myspace, MMORPGs etc.) and the research interest in studying them.

As a part of Social Computing, Social Network Analysis is recognized as a methodology to understand relationships between the actors and modeling them into graph theory, while Knowledge Management comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences. The organization ability to manage their intellectual capital is crucial for business sustainability. This paper will present the idea on how knowledge is disseminated effectively by the help of Social Network Analysis

What is the state of the research on crowdsourcing for policymaking? This article begins to answer this question by collecting, categorizing, and situating an extensive body of the extant research investigating policy crowdsourcing, within a new framework built on fundamental typologies from each field. We first define seven universal characteristics of the three general crowdsourcing techniques (virtual labor markets, tournament crowdsourcing, open collaboration), to examine the relative trade-offs of each modality. We then compare these three types of crowdsourcing to the different stages of the policy cycle, in order to situate the literature spanning both domains. We finally discuss research trends in crowdsourcing for public policy and highlight the research gaps and overlaps in the literature.

This chapter analyzes business networks as a part of a multi-domain innovation ecology, which includes global production and innovation ecosystems, institutional network facilitators, and local communities and users. Their interplay is a reflection of the reconfiguration of inter-sectoral relations, in which business, government, and citizens may produce collaborative synergies and, thus, contribute to growth, competitiveness, and social development. Web 2.0 is not a panacea, nor does it bring benefits automatically. On the contrary, companies need to be sensitive to the network logic and partners’ orientations in order to maximize the innovation potential of global innovation networks facilitated by social network sites and other Web 2.0 tools and services.