Making sense of digital traces: An activity theory driven ontological approach

Abstract

Social Web content such as blogs, videos and other user-generated content present a vast source of rich "digital-traces" of individuals' experiences. The use of digital traces to provide insight into human behavior remains underdeveloped. Recently, ontological approaches have been exploited for tagging and linking digital traces, with progress made in ontology models for well-defined domains.However, the process of conceptualization for ill-defined domains remains challenging; requiring interdisciplinary efforts to understand the main aspects and capture them in a computer processable form. The primary contribution of this paper is a theory driven approach to ontology development that supports semantic augmentation of digital traces. Specifically we argue that (1) activity theory can be used to develop more insightful conceptual models of ill-defined activities; which (2) can be used to inform the development of an ontology; and, (3) that this ontology can be used to guide the semantic augmentation of digital traces for making sense of phenomena. A case study on interpersonal communication is chosen to illustrate the applicability of the proposed multidisciplinary approach. The benefits of the approach are illustrated through an example application, demonstrating how it may be used to assemble and make sense of digital traces.

Researching Transforming Communications in Times of Deep Mediatization: A Figurational Approach

“…As a result, through the use of these media we leave 'digital traces' (Karanasios et al 2013), data that can be aggregated and processed in automated ways on the basis of algorithms. This is the case across the variety of digital media platforms (van Dijck and Poell 2013), which are also understood as 'social software' (Stegbauer and Jäckel 2007: 7-10).…”

Uma Nova Abordagem para o Perfilamento de Usuários em Ambientes de Aprendizagem Ubíqua

“…Apesar de evoluir ao considerar os digital traces, este ainda apresenta limitações por necessitar da intervenção explícita do usuário na captura do perfil. Karanasios et al (2013) propuseram uma nova arquitetura para enriquecimento semântico de digital traces. O processo utilizado por esta arquitetura contém duas etapas.…”

“…Este artigo propõe uma nova abordagem baseada na arquitetura definida em [Karanasios et al 2013] para a criação e representação do perfil do usuário com base não somente nas URLs acessadas, mas também nos conteúdos das páginas, em ontologias e, por fim, nos digital traces produzidos pelos usuários. Para isto, é proposto o Semantic Augmentation System (SAS), um sistema de enriquecimento semântico de conteúdos associados a perfis de usuários em forma de biblioteca, que utilizada uma UPO (do inglês User Profile Ontology) básica que mantém dados dos usuários e links para os conceitos das ontologias de domínio empregadas no sistema.…”

“…A adequação do conteúdo educacional ao perfil do estudante é o foco de tais personalizações [Yarandi et al 2012, Yau e Joy 2010, Taraghi 2012, Ferreira et al 2012. O conhecimento adequado e atualizado sobre o perfil do usuário, ou seja, seus interesses, suas crenças, experiências de vida, intenções e comportamentos na Web, oferece a estrutura básica para o funcionamento de tais sistemas [Peña et al 2013, Karanasios et al 2013.…”

Rethinking Transforming Communications: An Introduction

“…Being digital, at the same time and in addition they became means of producing data that can be delinked from the specific acts of communication and can be used for very different purposes. For example, communicating online via digital platforms, we produce 'metadata' of our social networks, and searching or buying online we leave 'digital traces' (Karanasios et al 2013(Karanasios et al : 2452. Such data is processed by algorithms in automatized ways.…”