DOCSLIB.ORG

Software Engineering Foundations for Sociotechnical Systems

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Software Engineering Foundations for Sociotechnical Systems From Social Machines to Social Protocols: Software Engineering Foundations for Sociotechnical Systems Amit K. Chopra Munindar P. Singh School of Computing and Communications Department of Computer Science Lancaster University North Carolina State University Lancaster, LA1 4WA, UK Raleigh, NC 27695-8206, USA [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT processes that underlie an open society via administrative The overarching vision of social machines is to facilitate so- assistance from computers [2, pp. 172{175]. cial processes by having computers provide administrative In the recent literature, the distinguishing features of a so- support. We conceive of a social machine as a sociotech- cial machine are a large numbers of users, social interaction nical system (STS): a software-supported system in which among them, and how the data generated by their interac- autonomous principals such as humans and organizations tions helps solve the problem at hand. A typical social ma- interact to exchange information and services. Existing ap- chine comprises Twitter and its users and serves purposes proaches for social machines emphasize the technical aspects such as earthquake notification and prediction [33], traffic and inadequately support the meanings of social processes, routing [27], and journalism [21]. leaving them informally realized in human interactions. We We define a sociotechnical system (STS) as a system of posit that a fundamental rethinking is needed to incorporate principals|social entities such as people|interacting with accountability, essential for addressing the openness of the each other with support from technical components for com- Web and the autonomy of its principals. puting and communication. A social machine is thus an We introduce Interaction-Oriented Software Engineering STS. A crucial limitation of current approaches lies in the (IOSE) as a paradigm expressly suited to capturing the so- fact that they leave the social and technical components, in cial basis of STSs. Motivated by promoting openness and effect, disconnected from each other. Specifically, the techni- autonomy, IOSE focuses not on implementation but on so- cal component is an implementation of some generic \lowest- cial protocols, specifying how social relationships, character- common denominator" functionality such as text messaging izing the accountability of the concerned parties, progress as or photo sharing. And, the social component is epiphenome- they interact. Motivated by providing computational sup- nal: left purely to what the users make of their interactions. port, IOSE adopts the accountability representation to cap- Not surprisingly, such lack of structure interferes with inter- ture the meaning of a social machine's states and transitions. operability and thus subverts the vision of social machines We demonstrate IOSE via examples drawn from health- interacting with one another to support complex social pro- care. We reinterpret the classical software engineering (SE) cesses. Just as metadata and semantics are invaluable in principles for the STS setting and show how IOSE is better linking data and services so too are they essential for sup- suited than traditional software engineering for supporting porting social processes. social processes. The contribution of this paper is a new To construct the big picture and formulate an effective so- paradigm for STSs, evaluated via conceptual analysis. lution, it helps to understand recent research on cybersecu- rity. Whereas traditional research on cybersecurity has been concerned with securing technical resources, such as comput- ing and storage devices and communication networks, it has 1. INTRODUCTION become clear that the most insidious challenges of cyberse- We take as our point of departure the vision of a social curity arise at the human and social levels. To this end, it machine, conceived of in the early days of the Web [2], and is important to recognize that any use of computing can be which has been gaining prominence. The underlying idea is understood as a sociotechnical system. The social aspects that a social machine represents a collective of humans and of cybersecurity are integral concerns for social machines. computers (or algorithms) working collaboratively on some For example, we would want to ensure that a social machine problem [3,18,31]. In a nutshell, a social machine comprises does not (depending upon its purpose) produce disinforma- humans and computers; it seeks to flexibly support social tion, malicious advice, or improper resource allocations. In effect, what unites the concerns of social machines and the social aspects of cybersecurity is accommodating open- ness and autonomy. The problem in each case is of gover- nance of an STS [37]. The central idea that we develop is that of, first, placing interaction front and center and, sec- Copyright is held by the International World Wide Web Conference Com- ond, of modeling interaction in terms not of the technical mittee (IW3C2). IW3C2 reserves the right to provide a hyperlink to the but of the social elements of an STS. This idea brings us to author’s site if the Material is used in electronic media. WWW 2016, April 11–15, 2016, Montréal, Québec, Canada. the conception of accountability as a way of characterizing ACM 978-1-4503-4143-1/16/04. \good behavior"for each of the principals involved. Account- DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2872427.2883018. ability here is directed from one principal to another and evaluate prominent methodologies vis `avis these princi- reflects the legitimate expectations the second principal has ples, showing where they fall short, thereby establishing of the first. Thus, accountability is a relationship between the novelty of IOSE. two principals who are notional peers and characterizes the • Benefits. We show that an explicit treatment of social social machine we are considering. protocols and accountability promotes properties such as In this spirit, we introduce an alternative paradigm called openness and innovation that motivate social machines. IOSE (pronounced ee-oh-zay, as in Italian) for Interaction- Oriented Software Engineering. IOSE is expressly suited to We demonstrate the concepts, principles, and benefits of capturing the social basis of STSs. To promote openness and IOSE via a public health scenario. autonomy, IOSE focuses not on implementation but on so- cial protocols, which specify how social relationships among Organization. This paper is organized as follows. Sec- the concerned principals progress through their interactions. tion 2 explains the limitations of traditional SE. Section 3 To sustain improved computational support, IOSE posits lays out the IOSE concepts and how systems are engineered that the meanings of social interactions be represented for- following IOSE. Section 4 introduces the fundamental prin- mally. These meanings on the one hand characterize the ciples of IOSE. Section 5 evaluates existing approaches vis social relationships of the principals and on the other hand `avis IOSE. Section 6 relates IOSE to extant and envisioned the state of the social machine being specified. Although social machines. Section 7 summarizes our contributions IOSE as a paradigm is not limited to particular social re- and Section 8 lays out an agenda of future research. lationships, for concreteness, our examples consider a few well-established types of social relationships, such as com- 2. CURRENT SOFTWARE ENGINEERING mitting to perform an action, dialectically committing to To avoid terminological confusion, we use the term SE- the truth of some assertion, prohibiting another from per- machine to refer to a software machine in the sense cur- forming an action such as divulging private information, and rently used in SE. The limitations of SE arise from the fact establishing an interpersonal relationship such as friendship. that it seeks to specify and deploy an SE-machine [48] that As we conceive of it, first, to specify a social machine is when implemented and installed, would satisfy stakeholder to specify its intended social protocol. A protocol in our requirements. As we explain below, an SE-machine unrea- vision specifies all and only the relevant social expectations sonably limits principal autonomy and imposes an arbitrary and the concomitant accountability of the principals partic- standard of correctness that is disconnected from the expec- ipating in a social machine. That is, any expectation that tations of the principals. makes a difference in a social machine must arise in the pro- tocol. No operational detail must feature in the protocol 2.1 SE-Machines unless it is part of some expectation. Second, to participate SE seeks to produce a specification of software conceptu- in the social machine is to enact that social protocol. In alized as an SE-machine that would be a component in the general, each social entity that participates in a social ma- system. For illustration, let us sketch van Lamsweerde's [43] chine may apply its own software implementation to assist influential account of SE. The system as is is the system with in its participation. The implementation would capture the limitations identified. SE seeks to engineer the system to be, policies by which its principal acts in a social machine. We whose objectives are to avoid those limitations. The idea is can judge the correctness of such a software implementation to come up with a set of services, constraints, and assump- with respect to the protocol in which it would participate. tions under which the stated objectives would be met|some An important consequence of adopting a protocol as a by the software to be as part of the system to be; some via specification is that whereas a protocol provides a standard responsibilities assigned to components in the environment, of correctness, it does not enforce compliant behavior. As namely, people, devices, and existing software. The software an autonomous party, a principal may violate a protocol. In to be is an SE-machine that maps inputs from its environ- general, well-designed social machines (protocols) would be ment to outputs or effects in the environment by monitoring resilient against certain kinds of violations.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Social Factory Architecture: Social Networking Services And
    Social Factory Architecture: Social Networking Services and Production Scenarios Through the Social Internet of Things, Services and People for the Social Operator 4.0 David Romero, Thorsten Wuest, Johan Stahre, Dominic Gorecky To cite this version: David Romero, Thorsten Wuest, Johan Stahre, Dominic Gorecky. Social Factory Architecture: Social Networking Services and Production Scenarios Through the Social Internet of Things, Services and People for the Social Operator 4.0. IFIP International Conference on Advances in Production Manage- ment Systems (APMS), Sep 2017, Hamburg, Germany. pp.265-273, 10.1007/978-3-319-66923-6_31. hal-01666177 HAL Id: hal-01666177 https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01666177 Submitted on 18 Dec 2017 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution| 4.0 International License Social Factory Architecture: Social Networking Services and Production Scenarios through the Social Internet of Things, Services and People for the Social Operator 4.0 David Romero1-2, Thorsten Wuest3, Johan Stahre4, Dominic Gorecky5 1 Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico 2 Griffith University, Australia [email protected] 3 West Virginia University, USA [email protected] 4 Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden [email protected] 5 Switzerland Innovation, Switzerland [email protected] Abstract.
    [Show full text]
  • Social Machines the Coming Collision of Artificial Intelligence, Social Networking, and Humanity
    apress.com Computer Science : Artificial Intelligence Hendler, James, Mulvehill, Alice M. Social Machines The Coming Collision of Artificial Intelligence, Social Networking, and Humanity What the concept of a social machine is and how the activities of non- programmers are contributing to machine intelligence How modern artificial intelligence technologies, such as Watson, are evolving and how they process knowledge from both carefully produced information (such as Wikipedia and journal articles) and from big data collections The fundamentals of neuromorphic computing, knowledge graph search, and linked data, as well as the basic technology concepts that underlie networking applications such as Facebook and Twitter How the change in attitudes towards cooperative work on the Web, especially in the younger demographic, is critical to the future of Web applications Apress Will your next doctor be a human being—or a machine? Will you have a choice? If you do, 1st ed., XVI, 174 p. 51 illus., what should you know before making it? This book introduces the reader to the pitfalls and 1st 46 illus. in color. edition promises of artificial intelligence (AI) in its modern incarnation and the growing trend of systems to "reach off the Web" into the real world. The convergence of AI, social networking, and modern computing is creating an historic inflection point in the partnership between human beings and machines with potentially profound impacts on the future not only of Printed book computing but of our world and species. AI experts and researchers James Hendler—co- Softcover originator of the Semantic Web (Web 3.0)—and Alice Mulvehill—developer of AI-based Printed book operational systems for DARPA, the Air Force, and NASA—explore the social implications of AI Softcover systems in the context of a close examination of the technologies that make them possible.
    [Show full text]
  • Scholarly Social Machines
    Scholarly Social Machines David De Roure1, 1Oxford e-Research Centre, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK [email protected] Identifier: http://www.oerc.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/users/user384 /scholarly-social-machines.html In Reply To: https://linkedresearch.org/calls Despite many attempts to perturb a scholarly publishing system that is over 350 years old, it feels pretty much like business as usual.[1] Here I question whether we have become trapped inside the machine, and argue that if we want to change anything in an informed way then we need to step outside and take a look. How do we do this? First I describe what I mean by a social ma‐ chine, and the “scholarly social machines ecosystem”. The article closes with a list of questions that I believe we need to be asking. The evolutionary growth of new social engines Once upon a time, interacting with digital content was an option, as was turn‐ ing to social networking sites to communicate with friends and colleagues. To‐ day our lives are mandatorily mediated by technology that enables academic, social, economic and cultural interactions at scale. Our widespread adoption of Web, laptop and smartphone, with many more devices still to come, means we find ourselves living in interleaved physical and virtual worlds. The design and analysis of these socio-technical systems has attracted much academic attention, exploring both social science and computer science per‐ spectives. Here we focus on one model in particular, because it is an abstrac‐ tion that underpins the Web—it is the Social Machine.
    [Show full text]
  • Beyond the Internet of Things: the Social Networking of Machines
    Hindawi Publishing Corporation International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks Volume 2016, Article ID 8178417, 15 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/8178417 Review Article Beyond the Internet of Things: The Social Networking of Machines Marina Pticek,1,2,3 Vedran Podobnik,1,2 and Gordan Jezic1,3 1 Department of Telecommunications, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia 2Social Networking and Computing Laboratory (socialLAB), Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia 3Internet of Things Laboratory (IoT-lab), Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia Correspondence should be addressed to Vedran Podobnik; [email protected] Received 27 November 2015; Revised 31 March 2016; Accepted 26 April 2016 Academic Editor: Andrei Gurtov Copyright © 2016 Marina Pticek et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Communication is a prerequisite for any form of social activity, including social networking. Nowadays, communication is not reserved only for humans, but machines can also communicate. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art technology in the area of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication by comparing the M2M concept with other related research paradigms such as Wireless Sensor Networks, Cyber-Physical Systems, Internet of Things, and Human-Agent Collectives. Furthermore, the paper analyses trends in the interconnecting of machines and identifies an evolutionary path in which future (smart) machines will form mostly or completely autonomous communities bonded through social connections.
    [Show full text]
  • James A. Hendler, Phd
    James A. Hendler, PhD Tetherless World Professor & Director, Rensselaer Institute for Data Exploration and Applications Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute [email protected] US citizen, Security Clearance (on request) 518-276-4401 phone Social Security # (on request) 518-276-4464 Fax http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~hendler Twitter: @jahendler Education May, 1986 Department of Computer Science, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. PhD -- Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence. Thesis title: Integrating Marker-Passing and Problem-Solving: A Spreading Activation Approach to Improved Choice in Planning. May, 1983 Department of Computer Science, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. ScM -- Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence. Thesis project: Implementation of a pseudo-parallel marker-passing system within a frame representation language. May, 1982 Psychology Department, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Tx. MS -- Cognitive Psychology, Human Factors Engineering. Thesis title: The Effects of a System-Imposed Grammatical Restriction on Interactive Natural Language Dialog May, 1978 Department of Computer Science, Yale University, New Haven, Ct. BS -- Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence. Experience in Higher Education 2007–pres. Rensselaer Polytechnic University (RPI) 1/07 – pres, Tetherless World Constellation Chair (Endowed), joint positions in computer and cognitive science departments 9/10 – 7/12, Program Director, Information Technology and Web Science 7/12 – 9/13, Department Head, Computer Science 9/13 –pres, Director, Institute for Data Exploration and Applications Affiliate faculty, Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (2009- ) Affiliate, Industrial and System Engineering (2015 - ) Affiliate faculty, Center for Materials, Devices, and Integrated Systems (2015- ) 1 1986-12/06 University of Maryland, College Park 8/99-12/06. Full Professor, 8/92-7/99. Associate Professor 1/86-8/92, Assistant Professor Director, Joint Institute for Knowledge Discovery, 1/04-12/06.
    [Show full text]
  • Web Science and the Social Machine
    Web Science and the Rise of the Social Machine November 2012 Written by Intersticia as a contribution to Web Science Australia Intersticia Pty Ltd ABN: 78 079 722 384 P.O. Box 1051, Crows Nest, NSW, 2065. Australia Email: [email protected] Table of Contents TABLE OF CONTENTS ....................................................................................... 2 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 3 SCIENCE AND THE WEB ................................................................................... 3 WHAT IS THE WEB? ......................................................................................... 4 Web 1.0 ................................................................................................................................................................................ 4 Web 2.0 ................................................................................................................................................................................ 4 The “Semantic” Web ...................................................................................................................................................... 5 THE BIRTH OF WEB SCIENCE .......................................................................... 7 WEB SCIENCE – SCOPE AND BREADTH ........................................................... 9 THE PUSH FOR “OPEN” .................................................................................. 10 THE WEB OBSERVATORY
    [Show full text]
  • Social Micromachine: Origin and Characteristics
    Social Micromachine: Origin and Characteristics Brunno Wagner Lemos de Souza and Sílvio Romero de Lemos Meira Centro de Informática, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil Keywords: Information Systems. Social Machines. Relationship-aware. Microservices. Social Micromachine. Abstract: The incorporation of computing into society through personal devices has led to the discussion of Social Machines and social computing, that is, has guided the even greater existence of relationships between people and machines to solve problems. Social Machines represent information systems that establish connections through certain constraints to deal with the complexity of services and operations because with the spread of the web as a software development platform along with increased interactivity and application connectivity, the understanding of the nature of computing has been modified. Software architecture is a description of how a software system is organized whether the large or small scale and is currently highly interconnected because interactions, relationships, and their constraints are considered in software behavior, including the service granularity that is used to measure the depth of abstraction that has been applied to existing services. In this research, some specific definitions of Social Machines are presented, extending the focus of the different relationship visions and their restrictions. Using a methodology based on technical goals, the understanding of the relationship-aware is presented, adding it to the Social Machine and to term Social Micromachine, highlighting the Microservice architecture as one of the types of service-oriented relationship. 1 INTRODUCTION retrieve), process, store, and distribute information to support decision making, coordination, and control of The first definitions of Social Machines were made an organization.
    [Show full text]
  • SOCIAM Social Machines and Linked Data
    SOCIAM Social Machines and Linked Data Dominic DiFranzo Missing Piece e-inFrastructure Big Data The Future! The Fourth Big Compute Quadrant Conven@onal Social online Computaon Networking R&D More machines More people e-inFrastructure Big Data The Future! Social Big Compute Machines Conven@onal Social online Computaon Networking R&D More machines More people The Order oF Social Machines Real liFe is and must be Full oF all kinds oF social constraint – the very processes From which society arises. Computers can help iF we use them to create abstract social machines on the Web: processes in which the people do the creave work and the machine does the administraon… The stage is set For an evolu@onary growth oF new social engines. Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web, 1999 A Big Picture Machines using people e.g. turk People using machines e.g. collec@ve ac@on More machines More people Social Machines the New Fron@er An Example The Kenyan elec@on on the 27th December 2007 resulted in a wave oF riots, killings and turmoil… AFrican blogger Erik Hersman read a post by another blogger Ory Okolloh… Birth oF “Nobody Knows Everything, but Everyone Knows Something.” Local observers submit reports using the Web or SMS Social Machine Variations D.C. "Snowmageddon" Fukushima Tsunami Port au Prince Earthquake Arab Spring Obama '08 Nigel Shadbolt et al Social Machines are NOT Turing Machines • they do contain conven@onal algorithmic components • but much else is different • a social machine will start with an incomplete specificaon that grows and evolves to cover
    [Show full text]
  • The Evolution of the Concept of Semantic Web in The
    Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 30 July 2018 doi:10.20944/preprints201807.0560.v1 Peer-reviewed version available at Publications 2018, 6, 44; doi:10.3390/publications6040044 1 Article 2 The evolution of the concept of Semantic Web in the 3 context of Wikipedia: An exploratory approach to 4 study the collective conceptualization in a digital 5 collaborative environment 6 Luís Miguel Machado 1*, Maria Manuel Borges 2 and Renato Rocha Souza 3 7 1 Univercity of Coimbra; [email protected]; Tel.: +351-964-152-983 8 2 Univercity of Coimbra; [email protected] 9 3 Fundação Getúlio Vargas; [email protected] 10 * Correspondence author 11 12 Abstract: Wikipedia, as "social machine", is a privileged place to observe the collective construction 13 of concepts without central control. Based on Dahlberg's theory of concept, and anchored in the 14 pragmatism of Hjørland - in which the concepts are socially negotiated meanings - the evolution of 15 the concept of Semantic Web (SW) was analyzed in the English version of Wikipedia. An 16 exploratory, descriptive and qualitative study was designed and we identified 26 different 17 definitions (between 7-12-2001 and 12/31/2017) of which 8 are of particular relevance for their 18 duration, with the latter being the two recorded at the end of the analyzed period. According to 19 them, SW: "is a extension of the web"and "is a Web of Data"; the latter, used as a complementary 20 definition, links to Berners-Lee's publications. In Wikipedia, the evolution of the SW concept 21 appears to be based on the search for the use of non-technical vocabulary and the control of 22 authority carried out by the debate.
    [Show full text]
  • Social Machines the Coming Collision of Artificial Intelligence, Social Networking, and Humanity ― James Hendler Alice M
    Social Machines The Coming Collision of Artificial Intelligence, Social Networking, and Humanity ― James Hendler Alice M. Mulvehill Social Machines The Coming Collision of Artificial Intelligence, Social Networking, and Humanity James Hendler Alice M. Mulvehill Social Machines: The Coming Collision of Artificial Intelligence, Social Networking, and Humanity James Hendler Alice M. Mulvehill Albany, New York, USA Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4842-1157-1 ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4842-1156-4 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4842-1156-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016950738 Copyright © 2016 by James Hendler and Alice M. Mulvehill This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Trademarked names, logos, and images may appear in this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, logo, or image we use the names, logos, and images only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made.
    [Show full text]
  • The Evolution of the Concept of Semantic Web in the Context of Wikipedia: an Exploratory Approach to Study the Collective Concep
    publications Article The Evolution of the Concept of Semantic Web in the Context of Wikipedia: An Exploratory Approach to Study the Collective Conceptualization in a Digital Collaborative Environment Luís Miguel Machado 1,* , Maria Manuel Borges 1 and Renato Rocha Souza 2 1 Department of Philosophy, Communication and Information, University of Coimbra, 3004-530 Coimbra, Portugal; mmb@fl.uc.pt 2 School of Applied Mathematics “EMAp”, Getúlio Vargas Foundation, Rio de Janeiro RJ 22250-900, Brazil; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +351-964-152-983 Received: 28 July 2018; Accepted: 29 October 2018; Published: 5 November 2018 Abstract: Wikipedia, as a “social machine”, is a privileged place to observe the collective construction of concepts without central control. Based on Dahlberg’s theory of concept, and anchored in the pragmatism of Hjørland—in which the concepts are socially negotiated meanings—the evolution of the concept of semantic web (SW) was analyzed in the English version of Wikipedia. An exploratory, descriptive, and qualitative study was designed and we identified 26 different definitions (between 12 July 2001 and 31 December 2017), of which eight are of particular relevance for their duration, with the latter being the two recorded at the end of the analyzed period. According to them, SW: “is an extension of the web” and “is a Web of Data”; the latter, used as a complementary definition, links to Berners-Lee’s publications. In Wikipedia, the evolution of the SW concept appears to be based on the search for the use of non-technical vocabulary and the control of authority carried out by the debate.
    [Show full text]
  • Designing Social Machines for Tackling Online Disinformation
    Designing Social Machines for Tackling Online Disinformation Antonia Wild Andrei Ciortea Simon Mayer University of St. Gallen University of St. Gallen University of St. Gallen St. Gallen, Switzerland St. Gallen, Switzerland and ETH Zürich [email protected] Inria, Université Côte d’Azur, CNRS St. Gallen, Switzerland Sophia Antipolis, France [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT Web – and envisioned the use of annotations as a suitable mecha- 3 Traditional news outlets as carriers and distributors of information nism. Such Web Annotations, now a W3C Recommendation [16], have been challenged by online social networks with regards to construct a metadata layer on top of existing resources and without their gate-keeping function. We believe that only a combined effort requiring their modification. As such, they can be regarded as acon- of people and machines will be able to curb so-called “fake news” nective fabric that allows users to address statements within Web 4 at scale in a decentralized Web. In this position paper, we propose pages and to bind these statements to metadata – in the domain an approach to design social machines that coordinate human- of online disinformation, for instance, regarding their provenance, and machine-driven credibility assessment of information on a truth assessments by others, or opposing views from other sources. decentralized Web. To this end, we defined a fact-checking process Academics and practitioners have tested human- and machine- that draws upon ongoing efforts for tackling disinformation on the based approaches that make use of annotations to tackle online Web, and we formalized this process as a multi-agent organisation disinformation (see Sec.
    [Show full text]