Issues: What the Web Can Tell us About Human Behavior

What the Web Can Tell us About Human Behavior

Presented by:

Kristine GloriaThe Tetherless World Constellation

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY

With thanks to the extended RPI Tetherless World Team

Wednesday, July 10, 13

AGENDA

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I. Background

II. Tetherless World ConstellationIII. Current Research

IV. Future Research


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• Bachelor’s in Journalism from UT - Austin

• Master’s in Media Studies from UT - Austin

• Worked:

• Microsoft, AMD, Rambus, etc.

• New America Foundation in D.C.

• Texas House of Representatives - Austin, TX

• U.S. Congressional Race - TX - District 38 in South in Texas

• Co-founder of PolitiHacks

What does this have to do with Cognitive Science?


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communication politics

TECHNOLOGY

motivations?behavior?

design?values?


Why the Web?

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Why RPI?

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• Engineering/ technical expertise

• Deep knowledge of the Web’s infrastructure

• Expertise in Semantic Web

• Cognitive Science Department

• Multidisciplinary nature gives me flexibility to firm up gaps in my knowledge

• Prof. Jim Hendler

• Understood / support for exploring the intersection of technology, politics, social behavior


Tetherless World Constellation

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“ . .is a constellation of multidisciplinary researchers who study the scientific and engineering principles that underlie the Web, to enhance the Web's reach beyond the desktop and laptop computer, and develops new technologies and languages that expand the capabilities of the Web.”


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Future Knowledge Base

communication politicscognitive &

social psychology

TECHNOLOGY



Key authors

Sherry Turkle: Department of Science, Technology, and Society at MIT•Life on the Screen: Iden1ty in the Age of the Internet (1997)•Simula1on and Its Discontents (2009)•Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (2011)

Helen Nissenbaum: Media, Culture, and CommunicaAon & Computer Science Director, InformaAon Law InsAtute at NYU•“Where Computer Security Meets NaAonal Security “(2007)•“Embodying Values in Technology: Theory and PracAce” (2008)•Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life (2011)

Danny Weitzner: MIT CSAIL Decentralized InformaAon Group •"DirecAng Policy-‐Making: Beyond the Net's Metaphor” (1997)•"InformaAon Accountability”(2008) •“Foreign Policy of the Internet” (2011)



Current Research

What can the Web tell us about human social behavior?•How is social distance[1][2] altered or effected by computer mediated systems (aka the Web) in projecAng mental states onto other people? •How and can this informaAon be used to develop public policy?

[1] Machews, JusAn L., and Teenie Matlock. "Understanding the link between spaAal distance and social distance." Social Psychology 42.3 (2011): 185-‐192.

[2] Bar-‐Anan, Yoav, et al. "AutomaAc processing of psychological distance: Evidence from a Stroop task." Journal of experimental psychology. General136.4 (2007): 610.


Current Research

How does this phenomena (e.g. the Web, structured data, etc.) change our quesEons about our methods, accountability, ethics, and underlying biases in our research? •What of arAficial environments?

"Visual complexity produces opacity. Massive individualizing data produces beautiful, playful

hairballs which show us nothing."- Bruno Latour, CHI2013


Current Research

InformaEon Sharing Online Project (preliminary work)•To explore the process of "structuraAon", in which decisions are influenced by contextual factors (episodic) during trade-‐off decisions•ReconceptualizaAon of a model for privacy comparing “face-‐to-‐face” offline communicaAon pracAces with human-‐computer mediated communicaAon [1]•Understanding trade-‐offs:•Convenience v. privacy•Socio-‐technical (e.g. design of technologies, influence of public insAtuAons, governments etc.)

[1] Pierre, J. "Reverse Privacy Engineering." ACM Web Science Conference. In Proceedings. (2013).


Mixed Methods Approach

To begin, we embarked on a mixed methods approach: •CreaAon and administraAon of survey

•Exploring quesAons related to four key topics (per literature review):

• Security, accountability, privacy, & transparency

• Episodic in content

• Both qualitaAve and quanAtaAve quesAons were asked


Sample results



• Explores the relationships of people and semantics in the graph database

• Users can visualize and analyze different types of sub-graphs

Twitter Network ObservatoryMakani, B. & Zhang, Q.



How it all fits together

communication

politics

cognitive & social

psychology

design

techn

olo

gy


QuesAons?

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Semantic Web

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• Inclusion of semantic content in web pages

• Inserting of machine-readable metadata

• Giving structure to current unstructured data on the web

• Resource Description Framework (RDFs)

• Objective: support the interoperability of metadata

Example: “Katie knows Jane Doe”


Katie | knows | Jane Doe

uri://people#KatieSmith12 http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/knows uri://people#JaneDoe45

Subject Predicate Object

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http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/knows

http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/knows

Issues: What the Web Can Tell us About Human Behavior

Technology

web pages

current research iv

future research

intersection of technology

social behavior

ut austin masters

ev psychology

relationships of people