Cognitive Structure of Collective Awareness Platforms

Abstract

Abstract-Collective awareness platforms (CAPs) are internet and mobile tools for collaboration, sustainability and social innovation that can allows drastic improvement of our lifestyle, beyond the standard economic model. However, their development is often driven (and motivated) by technology, while their adoption and usage characteristics are determined by the social interactions and can be affected by many items, up to failure. We describe here our approach to CAPs modelling that includes elements from cognitive and evolutionary sciences, in the hope of providing instruments for the improvement and the assessment of CAPs.

Towards a Collective Awareness Platform for Privacy Concerns and Expectations

“…The most important difficulty that most "young" CAPS face is how to reach a critical size above which payoff for the platform (however defined) becomes positive. In order to overcome this initial threshold effect [2], a multi-dimensional strategy is needed to promote user engagement and foster social innovation.…”

“…The need to forge sound laws to regulate business policies for data protection is judged necessary by many stakeholders in the digital market. Europe, in particular, is pioneering such efforts by recently enacting a new, reformed data protection regulation 2 and by constantly updating its e-Privacy-related directives 3 .…”

“…Our limited understanding of the potency of digital services and the low degree of awareness on the privacy risks involved help accentuate the problem. The situation is sustained, and implicitly supported, by the current scheme with General Terms and Conditions, Terms of Service, Privacy Policy or End-User License Agreement docu- 1 http://webfoundation.org/2017/03/web-turns-28-letter/ 2 Regulation 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation), L 119/14.5.2016 3 https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/proposal-eprivacy-regulation 4 https://www.forbrukerradet.no/appfail-en/ 5 http://www.forbrukerradet.no/side/norwegian-consumer-council-files-complaint-againsttinder-for-breaching-european-law, http://www.forbrukerradet.no/side/happn-shares-userdata-in-violation-of-its-own-terms/ 6 https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/netzwelt/Nackt-im-Netz-Millionen-Nutzerausgespaeht,nacktimnetz100.html, 7 http://donottrack.us/ ments (collectively referred to as ToS in this paper), which represent the most direct means a consumer has to understand how his/her personal data are handled. A recent study by NCC showed that just reading the ToS for apps on a typical smartphone would take more than 24 hours 8 .…”

Results of a Collective Awareness Platforms Investigation

“…Collective Awareness Platforms are important crowdsourcing instruments that may promote cooperation, emergence of collective intelligence, participation and promotion of virtuous behaviours in the fields of social life, energy, sustainable environment, health, transportation, etc. [1,2]. CAPs do not obey in general to the usual market dynamics: they are developed by volunteers or after a public support (namely, EU projects).…”

Collective Awareness Platforms and Digital Social Innovation Mediating Consensus Seeking in Problem Situations

“…Often such 'voluntary model' is conceptualized as a collaborative commons paradigm as it bypasses the capitalist markets and relies on zero marginal cost [2]. Many applications are devoted to real actions, beyond simple knowledge-sharing, for instance by promoting energy saving (e.g., carpooling, food sharing, buying groups) and essentially harness communication among people [3]. With regard to the optimization and potentials of ICT-enabled spontaneous, massive and collective citizen involvement the concept of crowdsourcing has been recently defined as a process of accumulating the ideas, thoughts or information from many independent participants, with aim to find the best solution for a given challenge [4].…”