Technology-Mediated Social Participation Jennifer Preece College of Information Studies – iSchool Ben Shneiderman Dept. of Computer Science

Goal: Transform society with social media Healthcare Disaster response Energy Education Culture & diversity Political participation Environment & climate Citizen science Economic health Public safety Globalization & development Local civic involvement

Malicious attacks Privacy violations Lack of trust Failure to be universal Unreliable when needed Misuse by Terrorists & criminals Promoters of racial hatred Political oppressors Challenges & Dangers

Early Steps Informal Gathering College Park, MD, April 2009 Article: Science March 2009 BEN SHNEIDERMAN

NSF Grant IIS Workshops: Dec 2009 & April 2010

- Scientific Foundations - Advancing Design of Social Participation Systems - Visions of What is Possible With Sharable Socio-­technical Infrastructure - Participating in Health Educational Priorities for Technology Mediated Social Participation - Engaging the Public in Open Government: Social Media Technology and Policy for Government Transparency Cyberinfrastructure for Social Action on National Priorities

1) Focus on National Priorities & Impact Healthcare, disaster response, energy Education, culture & diversity… 2) Develop Theories of Social Participation How do social media networks evolve? How can participation be increased? 3) Provide Technology Infrastructure Scalable, reliable, universal, manageable Protect privacy, stop attacks, resolve conflicts Vision: Social Participation

From Reader to Leader: Motivating Technology-Mediated Social Participation Preece & Shneiderman, AIS Trans. Human-Computer Interaction1 (1), 2009 aisel.aisnet.org/thci/vol1/iss1/5/ Reader 500M Contributor 500K Collaborator ` All Users 2B Leader

1) Focus on National Priorities & Impact Healthcare, disaster response, energy Education, culture & diversity… 2) Develop Theories of Social Participation How do social media networks evolve? How can participation be increased? 3) Provide Technology Infrastructure Scalable, reliable, universal, manageable Protect privacy, stop attacks, resolve conflicts Vision: Social Participation

NodeXL: Network Overview for Discovery & Exploration in Excel casci.umd.edu/NodeXL_Teaching

Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL I. Getting Started with Analyzing Social Media Networks 1. Introduction to Social Media and Social Networks 2. Social media: New Technologies of Collaboration 3. Social Network Analysis II. NodeXL Tutorial: Learning by Doing 4. Layout, Visual Design & Labeling 5. Calculating & Visualizing Network Metrics 6. Preparing Data & Filtering 7. Clustering &Grouping III Social Media Network Analysis Case Studies Threaded Networks 10. Twitter 11. Facebook 12. WWW 13. Flickr 14. YouTube 15. Wiki Networks

Nation of Neighbors website: Art Hanson

NoN Report: Promotes Community Safety Break-In/Burglary Theft-Other Than from Home Vandalism/Graffiti/Destruction Suspicious Activity Threat Assault Accident-Motor Vehicle Drug Activity Fire Public Nuisance Reckless Endangerment Animal Problem ATV Complaint Litter/Garbage Dumping Quality of Life Issue Other

NoN Forums: How to motivate?

BioTracker Team Arijit Biswas (CS, PhD student); Anne Bowser (iSchool, MS student); Jen Hammock (EOL); Derek Hansen (iSchool); David Jacobs (CS, UMIACS); Darcy Lewis (iSchool, PhD student); Cyndy Parr (EOL); Jenny Preece (iSchool); Dana Rotman (iSchool, PhD student); Erin Stewart (iSchool MS student); Eric (CS, Undergrad)

Research questions Q1 How can a socially intelligent system be used to direct human effort and expertise to the most valuable collection and classification tasks? Q2 What are the most effective strategies for motivating enthusiasts and experts to voluntarily contribute and collaborate? Biotrackers.net

BioTracker system architecture

Encyclopedia of Life (EOL.org)

Take Away Messages Identify ambitious research themes Develop consensus with colleagues Engage other disciplines Reach out to journalists & public Work with industry & government Communicate to policy makers Create courses & degree programs Thursday morning talks: - Nation of Neighbors: Understanding users and their motivations - Encyclopedia of Life: Motivating public enthusiasts and expert scientists to document the world's species - Using Online Games to Integrate Human and Computer Vision

Summer Social WebShop, August 23-26, 2011 IIS : WebShop 3.0: Technology-Mediated Social Participation NSF Social Computational Systems Program: SES : BioTracker: Melding Human & Machine Intelligence to Create Large-Scale Collaborative Systems IIS : Supporting a Nation of Neighbors with Community Analysis Visualization Environments NodeXL Project Continues - Thanks to Microsoft Social Media Research Foundation - Launched Next Steps (& Thanks to NSF) Biotrackers.net Nodexl.codeplex.com