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This is an Open Access Journal

Open Access journal
ISSN (Print) 13960466 - ISSN (Online) 1396-0466
Published by University of Illinois at Chicago University

[10 journals]

Measuring monographs: A quantitative method to assess scientific impact and societal relevance
- Authors: Ronald Snijder
  Abstract: In the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS), the monograph is an important means of communicating scientific results. As in the field of STM, the quality of research needs to be assessed. This is done by bibliometric measures and qualitative methods. Bibliometric measures based on articles do not function well in the field of HSS, where monographs are the norm. The qualitative methods which take into account several stakeholders are labour intensive and the results are dependent on self-assessment of the respondents, which may introduce bias. In the case of humanities, the picture becomes even less clear due to uncertainties about the stakeholders. This article describes a method that may complement the current research on scientific impact and societal relevance. This method measures the usage of online monographs and identifies the internet provider involved. The providers are categorized as academic; government; business; non-profit organisations and the general public. The usage is further cat-egorised in national and international. Combining this data makes it possible to assess the scientific impact and the societal relevance of the monographs. The method is quantitative, which makes the results easier to validate. It is not necessary to know the stakeholders in advance: the readers are identified through the method. The used data set consists of over 25,000 downloads by more than 1,500 providers, spread over 859 monographs. More than two thirds of the usage can be categorised, and almost 45% of all usage comes from non-academics. This might indicate that the monographs have an relevance in society. Two possible influences on monograph usage were analysed: subject and language. Most of the subjects that received a higher than average number of downloads come from the field of the social sciences; the humanities were less ‘popular’. Books in English – the ‘lingua franca’ of science – were downloaded the most. Languages such as Dutch were read much less outside of national borders that Italian or German. A Dutch or Belgian scholar would need a translation in order to have more influence abroad; this applies far less for Germans or Italians. While further research is needed, the results are promising and the proposed method could be used as an addition to the existing tools to measure the scholarly impact and societal relevance of the field of HSS.
  PubDate: 2013-05-06
  Issue No: Vol. 18 (2013)
The pedagogical foundations of massive open online courses
- Authors: David George Glance|Martin Forsey|Myles Riley
  Abstract: In 2011, the respective roles of higher education institutions and students worldwide were brought into question by the rise of the massive open online course (MOOC). MOOCs are defined by signature characteristics that include: lectures formatted as short videos combined with formative quizzes; automated assessment and/or peer and self–assessment and an online forum for peer support and discussion. Although not specifically designed to optimise learning, claims have been made that MOOCs are based on sound pedagogical foundations that are at the very least comparable with courses offered by universities in face–to–face mode. To validate this, we examined the literature for empirical evidence substantiating such claims. Although empirical evidence directly related to MOOCs was difficult to find, the evidence suggests that there is no reason to believe that MOOCs are any less effective a learning experience than their face–to–face counterparts. Indeed, in some aspects, they may actually improve learning outcomes.
  PubDate: 2013-05-05
  Issue No: Vol. 18 (2013)
Estimating online audiences: Understanding the limitations of competitive intelligence services
- Authors: David Kamerer
  Abstract: How much traffic does a Web site receive? While many may want to know the relative influence of someone else's site, generally only the site owner has access to accurate data. JavaScript-based Web analytics, such as Google Analytics or Omniture, are widely considered the gold standard for tracking audiences. These services are census- rather than sample-based. They also have the virtues of being entirely passive (requiring no input from the visitor) as well as providing true measures of behavior.If you're not the site owner, you'll have to use competitive intelligence services to estimate the traffic. These services a wide range of methodological approaches, generally recruiting panel members using an opt-in mechanism, sometimes mixing in anonymized data bought from Internet service providers. Three of the leading free services of this type are Alexa, Compete, and Quantcast.
  
  This study examines the methodology of these four methods of measuring online audiences. It compares the results from all three services using a panel of 18 Web sites that have agreed to share analytics data with the author.
  
  Results show high variability in the quality of the estimated audience data from competitive intelligence services. Using analytics as the reference, Compete underestimated traffic by more than 300 percent. Quantcast underestimated traffic by more than 200 percent. Confounding this pattern were occasional overestimates of traffic by these services. Alexa data, which is presented differently than Compete and Quantcast data, showed one significant correlation (page views) with analytics data, while three other variables showed no relationship to data from analytics.
  
  Overall, these services performed poorly. But are the data worthless? The report concludes with recommendations for understanding the limitations of competitive intelligence services and appropriately reporting audience activity based upon differing methodologies.
  PubDate: 2013-05-05
  Issue No: Vol. 18 (2013)
German politicians and their Twitter networks in the Bundestag Election 2009
- Authors: Thomas Plotkowiak|Katarina Stanoevska-Slabeva
  Abstract: In this paper we present an analysis of 599 Twitter accounts of politicians, who for the first time became involved with social networking, becoming their own "reputational entrepreneurs" in social media (Fine, 1996) while running for an office the German Bundestag election in 2009. They did so by creating their own Twitter accounts, tweeting their own content and deciding whom to connect with. We were able to investigate how and with whom politicians established connections and which topics they discussed by tracking almost 20,000 connections of over 599 Twitter accounts, monitoring over 240,000 tweets over a period of three weeks. Our findings contribute to the open question whether the political social media ecosphere is fragmented or not, whether the structure of the social network influences communication flow and sentiment among members of the medium. The analysis of the network shows that the majority of connections were established between members of the same party while connections between different parties were significantly less represented. An analysis of the exchanged tweets demonstrated that the majority of discussions took place between members of the same party cluster and was more positive towards members of the same political party rather than towards members of other political parties.
  PubDate: 2013-05-04
  Issue No: Vol. 18 (2013)
Envisioning the Internet: Implementing ‘disruptive innovation’ in media organizations
- Authors: Tamar Ashuri
  Abstract: When incorporating networked technologies, many established organizations face immense challenges, as these media involve new economic and cultural components. Predictions based on models concerning the incorporation of the so-called ‘disruptive innovations’ in established firms, are being offered in this article, viewing networked technologies as ‘disruptive innovations’. The study underscores the obstacles that limit implementation of such technologies in mainstream media organizations, and considers the strategies that might be used to overcome them. Analyzing the case of Israel’s leading newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, between the years 1995–2000, it shows how managers of this traditional business approached the Internet. The article analyzes how they respond to the ostensibly ‘disruptive’ networked innovation, eventually turning their organization’s Web site into the country’s chief news and content provider. The study offers lessons that extend beyond this specific case onto the broader vista of the implementation of ‘disruptive’ (networked) technologies in mainstream media environments.
  PubDate: 2013-05-01
  Issue No: Vol. 18 (2013)
Navigating an imagined Middle–earth: Finding and analyzing text–based and film–based mental images of Middle–earth through TheOneRing.net online fan community
- Authors: Jennifer M. Grek Martin|Anatoliy Gruzd|Vivian Howard
  Abstract: The proliferation of social media brings new opportunities to discover the ways in which we receive, process, and disseminate information -- even information that seems confined to our imaginations. Mental imagery -- those images we create in our imaginations as we read a text or watch a film -- is not well understood. Netlytic, a Web-based system for automated text analysis, permitted the capture and analysis of online discussions relating to mental images of J.R.R. Tolkien's and Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings as text and as film adaptation, giving insight to our understanding of mental imagery as a form of human cognition and information processing. Furthermore, this study serves as a starting point for further development of academic research using Web-based text analysis systems and online communities.
  PubDate: 2013-04-23
  Issue No: Vol. 18 (2013)
Mapping the global Twitter heartbeat: The geography of Twitter
- Authors: Kalev Leetaru|Shaowen Wang|Guofeng Cao|Anand Padmanabhan|Eric Shook
  Abstract: In just under seven years, Twitter has grown to count nearly 3% of the entire global population among its active users who have sent more than 170 billion 140-character messages. Today the service plays such a significant role in American culture that the Library of Congress has assembled a permanent archive of the site back to its first tweet, updated daily. With its open API, Twitter has become one of the most popular data sources for social research, yet the majority of the literature has focused on it as a text or network graph source, with only limited efforts to date focusing exclusively on the geography of Twitter, assessing the various sources of geographic information on the service and their accuracy. More than 3% of all tweets are found to have native location information available, while a naive geocoder based on a simple major cities gazetteer and relying on the user-provided Location and Profile fields is able to geolocate more than a third of all tweets with high accuracy when measured against the GPS-based baseline. Geographic proximity is found to play a minimal role both in who users communicate with and what they communicate about, providing evidence that social media is shifting the communicative landscape.
  PubDate: 2013-04-22
  Issue No: Vol. 18 (2013)