Social networks and collective intelligence

A return to the Agora

03/08/2012, Newcastle

Manuel Mazzara

The School of Athens

Joint work with:

Luca BiselliAntoine ChamotLuca Chiarabini

Simona De NicolaNicola Dragoni

Emanuela GoldoniPier Paolo GrecoAntonio Marraffa

Georgios Papageorgiou Nafees Qamar

A Fantastic New Era (!?!)

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

Thomas Edison

Web 2.0 Technologic Backbone Google

Yahoo!

Blogs

Wiki’s

Instant Messaging

Facebook

LinkedIn

MySpace

Wikipedia

eBay

YouTube

Twitter

Flickr

Skype

Why Social Computing ?

DO’S & DON’TS of SOCIAL DO’S & DON’TS of SOCIAL NETWORKINGNETWORKING

Old Problems Made Worse

Trustworthy?

Relevant?Newsworthy?

Traditional Media Gatekeeping

World Audience

Plurality of information or

an information cartel? Reuters bought by Canadian financial

data provider Thomson in a deal worth about £8.7bn [BBC, 15 May 2007]

Reuters prohibited any individual from owning 15% or more

The Thomson family now own 53%

Agenda-setting

Salience transfer the ability of a mass medium to transfer

relevant issues from its news media agendas to public agendas

The agenda-setting theory McCombs, Shaw, 1972 McCombs, 2004

The spiral of silence theory Noelle-Neumann, 1974

“There are no facts, only

interpretations”

(Friedrich Nietzsche)

Power of Media (!?!)

Hegelian Dialectic (spot how/where/when it is used!) The thesis is an intellectual proposition

The antithesis is the negation of the thesis, a reaction to the proposition

The synthesis solves the conflict between the thesis and antithesis by reconciling their common truths, and forming a new proposition

Example(s): Thesis: the French revolution/fire of Rome Antithesis: the terror which followed Synthesis: the constitutional state of free

citizens/blaming the Christians

Power of Illusion

Overcoming Gatekeeping ?

Internet offers an open platform where users can

interactively exchange information News is multimedia, multi-

dimensional, timely/timeless The user can control relevance The user is able to choose topics,

sources … The user can interact with

authors, other readers/followers …

Traditional/New Media Synopsis

Traditional media

Search engines

Social networks

Relevance/presence of the news

Decided by the

publisher

Decided by the

algorithm

Decided by the network

Interaction / feedback

Not allowed

Not allowed Possible

Topic

Content

Decided by the

publisher

Decided by the user

Decided by the network

Expand topic Not allowed

Allowed Allowed

Deciding Source Not allowed

Allowed Allowed

Individual (trust-based) ranking

Absent Absent Absent

We will either find a way, or make one ...”Aut inveniam viam aut faciam”

Maslow’s Law of the Instrument

”It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”

- H. Maslow, The Psychology of Science:A Reconnaissance. Harper & Row, 1966

Create a virtual agora where people can freely discuss and exchange information

From greek “poly", meaning many or several and “doxa" meaning common belief or popular opinion

More control over the news/information

Think! Discuss! Verify! Interact! Take an active role! Take (better?) decisions!

Time for Polidoxa now!

The core ranking parameters:

Configurable static parameters trustworthiness of contacts (decided by the

user) trustworthiness of sources/domains… (by the

user)

Dynamic Parameters depending on network activities and contact’s

distance evaluate (among other things) “like” and

“dislike” many “like” for a post is and indication of

how your network perceives it

Polidoxa Ranking Algorithm (the „how“)

Trustworthyness and ranking

www.page-x.com 40%

www.page-z.com 60%

www.page-y.com 30%

News from z

News from x

News from y

Some details about the algorithm…

If you can't explain it to

a six year old,

you don't understand

it yourself.” Albert Einstein

Polidoxa@Twitter

Twitter is less studied than FB etc…

Only text analysis, therefore simpler (for now)

At each search the trust is recalculated for each contact and the results are presented accordingly (higher trust first) Trust is in range 0..100

This prototype is just a proof of concept

FB application is the next step

Static/Dynamic Trust

Static trust is chosen by the user Dynamic trust is calculated according to the

following parameters : Number of retweet Number of Favourites Number of Mentions Number of hashtags #FF Number of user’s tweets containing the

searched keyword

Trust Formula

Trust = static_trust + coef1*nbr_fav + coeff2*nbr_ret +coeff_3*nbr_mentions + coeff3*nbr_FF + coeff4*nbr_tweets

static_trust = chosen by the user

nbr_fav = number of favourite tweets for this contact

nbr_ret = number of retweets you have done for this contact

nbr_ment = number of mention ("@username") relative to this contactnbr_FF = number of FF (hashtag #FF, Follow Friday) associate to this contact

nbr_tweets = number of tweets belonging to this contact in which the search term appears

Trust goes up and down (like in real life) Coefficients are application parameter set by

the admin (not the user)

When beyond 100% all trust values are rescaled to be within the range

The oldest interactions (in the current prototype more than one year old) are removed This actually decreases the trust value for

the contacts who have been ignored for some time

Polidoxa

Polidoxa

Relevance of the news Decided by the user

Interaction / feedback Allowed

Topic

content

Decided by the user and his/her network

Expand topic Allowed

Deciding Source Allowed

Individual trust-based ranking

Possible

Relationships = Links Individuals = NodesEvolution du monde des idées

Social Structure = Technology

Evolution of Plato’sWorld of Ideas

(Iperuranio)

Community = Network

Where do you want to go today (with Polidoxa)?

Collective Intelligence and Cyber-democracy?

Collective Intelligence

Biosphere

Forecasting

Sust

aina

ble

co

nsum

ptio

n an

d pr

oduc

tion

FinancesTaxes

Regulation

Just

ice

Legislation

Execution

Key concept is Cyber-feedback

Be creative when solving problems, use your right brain

hemisphere more often!