Francis Dittoh, V. D. Boer, A. Bon, Wendelien Tuyp, André Baart
A majority of the world remain unconnected to the World Wide Web due to issues like low literacy and relevant information. This study presents Mr. Meteo, a system that provides weather information via voice calls in local languages to rural farmers in Ghana. The study used an interdisciplinary approach to identify relevant informational needs and socio-economic implications, and early end-user and stakeholder involvement. Mr. Meteo was deployed in Bolgatanga, Ghana and represents a novel design in terms of actual web data access to rural areas. The positive feedback from farmers, and stakeholder’s interest in continuity, shows this approach to be an appropriate method of development and implementation of information systems for rural areas; successful due to end-user and stakeholder involvement, focus on existing technologies, the use of voice technologies to mitigate the problem of illiteracy, and information relevance to end-users. This paper presents the methodology and results of this novel, practical, local-context ICT4D project,that has produced a viable information system for rural communities.
{"title":"Mr. Meteo: Providing Climate Information for the Unconnected","authors":"Francis Dittoh, V. D. Boer, A. Bon, Wendelien Tuyp, André Baart","doi":"10.1145/3394332.3402824","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3394332.3402824","url":null,"abstract":"A majority of the world remain unconnected to the World Wide Web due to issues like low literacy and relevant information. This study presents Mr. Meteo, a system that provides weather information via voice calls in local languages to rural farmers in Ghana. The study used an interdisciplinary approach to identify relevant informational needs and socio-economic implications, and early end-user and stakeholder involvement. Mr. Meteo was deployed in Bolgatanga, Ghana and represents a novel design in terms of actual web data access to rural areas. The positive feedback from farmers, and stakeholder’s interest in continuity, shows this approach to be an appropriate method of development and implementation of information systems for rural areas; successful due to end-user and stakeholder involvement, focus on existing technologies, the use of voice technologies to mitigate the problem of illiteracy, and information relevance to end-users. This paper presents the methodology and results of this novel, practical, local-context ICT4D project,that has produced a viable information system for rural communities.","PeriodicalId":435721,"journal":{"name":"Companion Publication of the 12th ACM Conference on Web Science","volume":"118 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134013317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The lack of physical exercising activities and improper nutrition are known to be among the leading factors which cause health issues. Mauritius, though a small island, ranks among the first in terms of affected ratio for these health conditions. This research looks into the development of a customisable application to promote sustainable behaviour changes in terms of physical exercises and nutritional habits through the use of gaming components alongside social and community-based elements. Evaluation of prototypes have shown promising results in terms of technical feasibility and users’ interests.
{"title":"BehaviourCoach: A Customisable and Socially-Enhanced Exergaming Application Development Framework","authors":"Roushdat Elaheebocus, Sheekah Beharry, Girishsing Caussyram, Poovanen Seenan","doi":"10.1145/3394332.3402834","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3394332.3402834","url":null,"abstract":"The lack of physical exercising activities and improper nutrition are known to be among the leading factors which cause health issues. Mauritius, though a small island, ranks among the first in terms of affected ratio for these health conditions. This research looks into the development of a customisable application to promote sustainable behaviour changes in terms of physical exercises and nutritional habits through the use of gaming components alongside social and community-based elements. Evaluation of prototypes have shown promising results in terms of technical feasibility and users’ interests.","PeriodicalId":435721,"journal":{"name":"Companion Publication of the 12th ACM Conference on Web Science","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114077619","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This keynote will explore the broader issue of using socio-technical artificial intelligence (AI) systems in criminology for responding to cybercrime and cybersecurity issues. It will focus upon the importance of matching the delivery of AI with the scientific (technical) claims for it within a socio-political world. By drawing upon research into cybercrime and cybersecurity (including recent ransomware research), the talk will discuss the realities, the strengths and weaknesses, of using AI with regard to attribution and investigating cybercrime, and also preventing attacks to systems. It will argue that the meanings, logic and understandings of AI systems differ across disciplines which can result in significant differences in expectations. The broad conclusion is that because of this an interdisciplinary approach needs to be taken and that AI it is not a silver bullet. AI systems may be useful, for example, in responding to some cybercrimes, but not others, or effective in addressing stages of a cybercrime event, such as preventing malware infection; and even then, only with some major caveats. More importantly, is the recognition that AI cannot actually make hard decisions, but it can reasonably inform aspects of the decision-making processes of practitioners, professionals, policy makers and politicians who are mandated to make them. It is not only important to match the delivery of scientific claims with consumer expectations in order to maintain public confidence in the public security sector, but also because an arms races is developing as offenders are also beginning to employ AI in a number of different ways to help them victimize individuals, organisations and nation states [1]. The first part of this talk will draw upon existing examples to explore the general issue of using socio-technical AI systems to deal with crime and policing in a risk society [2] [3], before identifying some of the additional challenges presented by AI and cybercrime and cybersecurity [4] [5]. The second part will look at the methodological and socio-political problems of delivering science solutions within a socio-political world. The third part will conclude by discussing the practical realities, strengths and weaknesses, of using AI regarding attribution and investigating cybercrime, and preventing attacks to systems.
{"title":"AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Cybercrime: balancing expectations with delivery","authors":"D. Wall","doi":"10.1145/3394332.3402837","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3394332.3402837","url":null,"abstract":"This keynote will explore the broader issue of using socio-technical artificial intelligence (AI) systems in criminology for responding to cybercrime and cybersecurity issues. It will focus upon the importance of matching the delivery of AI with the scientific (technical) claims for it within a socio-political world. By drawing upon research into cybercrime and cybersecurity (including recent ransomware research), the talk will discuss the realities, the strengths and weaknesses, of using AI with regard to attribution and investigating cybercrime, and also preventing attacks to systems. It will argue that the meanings, logic and understandings of AI systems differ across disciplines which can result in significant differences in expectations. The broad conclusion is that because of this an interdisciplinary approach needs to be taken and that AI it is not a silver bullet. AI systems may be useful, for example, in responding to some cybercrimes, but not others, or effective in addressing stages of a cybercrime event, such as preventing malware infection; and even then, only with some major caveats. More importantly, is the recognition that AI cannot actually make hard decisions, but it can reasonably inform aspects of the decision-making processes of practitioners, professionals, policy makers and politicians who are mandated to make them. It is not only important to match the delivery of scientific claims with consumer expectations in order to maintain public confidence in the public security sector, but also because an arms races is developing as offenders are also beginning to employ AI in a number of different ways to help them victimize individuals, organisations and nation states [1]. The first part of this talk will draw upon existing examples to explore the general issue of using socio-technical AI systems to deal with crime and policing in a risk society [2] [3], before identifying some of the additional challenges presented by AI and cybercrime and cybersecurity [4] [5]. The second part will look at the methodological and socio-political problems of delivering science solutions within a socio-political world. The third part will conclude by discussing the practical realities, strengths and weaknesses, of using AI regarding attribution and investigating cybercrime, and preventing attacks to systems.","PeriodicalId":435721,"journal":{"name":"Companion Publication of the 12th ACM Conference on Web Science","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130830760","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Although literacy rates around the world have increased and there is an expectation that individuals who access web pages will be able to read their content, this is not always the case. The barriers that may be faced can be linked to the way the system is designed and content is written. There may be complex language or a layout that is dense, cluttered and lacks clear markers regarding the key points being made. Many organizations have provided guidance for web developers and authors offering suitable ways to ensure those accessing a website or service will have a pleasurable experience. However, it appears that there are still websites hosting pages with dense text, convoluted instructions and little support for those with low levels of literacy. When considering poor reading skills, the cause may be due to many factors including a lack of education, sensory and /or intellectual impairments and specific difficulties such as dyslexia. This means that the vast majority of online content may be hard to understand for a significant proportion of the world’s population. Moreover, these individuals may also lack digital skills, with little realization that assistive technologies and the availability of supportive access strategies can be helpful in these situations. This paper aims to introduce the idea of enhancing readability of web content by using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, such as linked data, natural language processing and image recognition to make available a wide range of automatically mapped multilingual symbols that can be used to clarify text content. In the past only a few symbol sets have been mapped and it was not possible to consider their appropriateness for text to symbol translations in a wide range of languages and cultural settings.
{"title":"Multilingual Symbolic Support for Low Levels of Literacy on the Web","authors":"E. Draffan, Chaohai Ding, M. Wald, Russell Newman","doi":"10.1145/3394332.3402831","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3394332.3402831","url":null,"abstract":"Although literacy rates around the world have increased and there is an expectation that individuals who access web pages will be able to read their content, this is not always the case. The barriers that may be faced can be linked to the way the system is designed and content is written. There may be complex language or a layout that is dense, cluttered and lacks clear markers regarding the key points being made. Many organizations have provided guidance for web developers and authors offering suitable ways to ensure those accessing a website or service will have a pleasurable experience. However, it appears that there are still websites hosting pages with dense text, convoluted instructions and little support for those with low levels of literacy. When considering poor reading skills, the cause may be due to many factors including a lack of education, sensory and /or intellectual impairments and specific difficulties such as dyslexia. This means that the vast majority of online content may be hard to understand for a significant proportion of the world’s population. Moreover, these individuals may also lack digital skills, with little realization that assistive technologies and the availability of supportive access strategies can be helpful in these situations. This paper aims to introduce the idea of enhancing readability of web content by using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, such as linked data, natural language processing and image recognition to make available a wide range of automatically mapped multilingual symbols that can be used to clarify text content. In the past only a few symbol sets have been mapped and it was not possible to consider their appropriateness for text to symbol translations in a wide range of languages and cultural settings.","PeriodicalId":435721,"journal":{"name":"Companion Publication of the 12th ACM Conference on Web Science","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114860758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Education and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be complimentary to each other. Over the period the state of education in India has been influenced by some good reforms in education system and its implications are immensely towards positive side. AI being the latest technological advancement can be an approach for sustainable, smooth and transparent solutions. AI enabled technology can fill the existing gaps in the present education system. This paper traverses the key issues of the Indian education system with the objective of proposing some solutions which are inspired by the AI innovations having the sustainability as a significant part of it.
{"title":"Sustainable Education in India through Artificial Intelligence: Challenges and Opportunities","authors":"Shalini, Ankit Tewari","doi":"10.1145/3394332.3402828","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3394332.3402828","url":null,"abstract":"Education and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be complimentary to each other. Over the period the state of education in India has been influenced by some good reforms in education system and its implications are immensely towards positive side. AI being the latest technological advancement can be an approach for sustainable, smooth and transparent solutions. AI enabled technology can fill the existing gaps in the present education system. This paper traverses the key issues of the Indian education system with the objective of proposing some solutions which are inspired by the AI innovations having the sustainability as a significant part of it.","PeriodicalId":435721,"journal":{"name":"Companion Publication of the 12th ACM Conference on Web Science","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126623930","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Web has been the subject of compelling biological metaphors that liken it to an evolving ecosystem. Analogies of this kind could benefit from further theoretical and empirical examination. Evolutionary and cognitive approaches provide not only a powerful theoretical framework to address this theme, but also a heritage of robust analytic tools that can help to quantify complex and subjective social and technological phenomena. The goal of this workshop will be to discuss how evolutionary approaches can inform our understanding of the Web at present, as well as methodological challenges and opportunities to shape its evolution into the future.
{"title":"Evolutionary thinking for the Web: Chairs' Welcome and Workshop Summary","authors":"Margaret A. Priestley, T. Sluckin, T. Tiropanis","doi":"10.1145/3394332.3402899","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3394332.3402899","url":null,"abstract":"The Web has been the subject of compelling biological metaphors that liken it to an evolving ecosystem. Analogies of this kind could benefit from further theoretical and empirical examination. Evolutionary and cognitive approaches provide not only a powerful theoretical framework to address this theme, but also a heritage of robust analytic tools that can help to quantify complex and subjective social and technological phenomena. The goal of this workshop will be to discuss how evolutionary approaches can inform our understanding of the Web at present, as well as methodological challenges and opportunities to shape its evolution into the future.","PeriodicalId":435721,"journal":{"name":"Companion Publication of the 12th ACM Conference on Web Science","volume":"59 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124500868","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
As we shift paradigms in the relationship between digital technologies and international development, many issues will need to be rethought. In this paper, I look at the changing nature of the relationship between digital and inequality in the global South; in particular tracing the re-scoping from concerns just about the digital divide and exclusion, to broader concerns about digital justice that also cover adverse incorporation into digitalised development systems across economic, political and social spheres.
{"title":"From the Digital Divide to Digital Justice in the Global South: [Keynote Web Science Workshop DigDivDigHum-20]","authors":"Richard Heeks","doi":"10.1145/3394332.3402821","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3394332.3402821","url":null,"abstract":"As we shift paradigms in the relationship between digital technologies and international development, many issues will need to be rethought. In this paper, I look at the changing nature of the relationship between digital and inequality in the global South; in particular tracing the re-scoping from concerns just about the digital divide and exclusion, to broader concerns about digital justice that also cover adverse incorporation into digitalised development systems across economic, political and social spheres.","PeriodicalId":435721,"journal":{"name":"Companion Publication of the 12th ACM Conference on Web Science","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132162605","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper – as a part of a broader research on the policies and practices of digital literacy in relation to inclusion-, seeks to identify the central tensions in teachers´ practices related to the use of digital technologies in education. In Argentina, these tensions have increased, the moment when the pandemic compelled the educational system at all levels, to switch from the physical to the virtual classroom. Despite the recent date of these events, in this study we aim to reflect on the first findings. We will continue this research through interviews and reports analysis, in the coming period.
{"title":"Digital Inequality in Education in Argentina: How the pandemic of 2020 increased existing tensions","authors":"Monica Pini","doi":"10.1145/3394332.3402827","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3394332.3402827","url":null,"abstract":"This paper – as a part of a broader research on the policies and practices of digital literacy in relation to inclusion-, seeks to identify the central tensions in teachers´ practices related to the use of digital technologies in education. In Argentina, these tensions have increased, the moment when the pandemic compelled the educational system at all levels, to switch from the physical to the virtual classroom. Despite the recent date of these events, in this study we aim to reflect on the first findings. We will continue this research through interviews and reports analysis, in the coming period.","PeriodicalId":435721,"journal":{"name":"Companion Publication of the 12th ACM Conference on Web Science","volume":"198 ","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114049076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Middleton, A. Lavorgna, Geoff Neumann, David Whitehead
In today's online forums and marketplaces cybercrime activity can often be found lurking in plain sight behind legitimate posts. Most popular criminology techniques are either manually intensive, and so do not scale well, or focus on statistical summaries across websites and can miss infrequent behaviour patterns. We present an inter-disciplinary (computer science, criminology and conservation science) socio-technical artificial intelligence (AI) approach to information extraction from the long tail of online forums around internet-facilitated illegal trades of endangered species. Our methodology is highly iterative, taking entities of interest (e.g. endangered plant species, suspects, locations) identified by a criminologist and using them to direct computer science tools including crawling, searching and information extraction over many steps until an acceptable resulting intelligence package is achieved. We evaluate our approach using two case study experiments, each based on a one-week duration criminology investigation (aided by conservation science experts) and evaluate both named entity (NE) directed graph visualization and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modelling. NE directed graph visualization consistently outperforms topic modelling for discovering connected entities in the long tail of online forums and marketplaces.
{"title":"Information Extraction from the Long Tail: A Socio-Technical AI Approach for Criminology Investigations into the Online Illegal Plant Trade","authors":"S. Middleton, A. Lavorgna, Geoff Neumann, David Whitehead","doi":"10.1145/3394332.3402838","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3394332.3402838","url":null,"abstract":"In today's online forums and marketplaces cybercrime activity can often be found lurking in plain sight behind legitimate posts. Most popular criminology techniques are either manually intensive, and so do not scale well, or focus on statistical summaries across websites and can miss infrequent behaviour patterns. We present an inter-disciplinary (computer science, criminology and conservation science) socio-technical artificial intelligence (AI) approach to information extraction from the long tail of online forums around internet-facilitated illegal trades of endangered species. Our methodology is highly iterative, taking entities of interest (e.g. endangered plant species, suspects, locations) identified by a criminologist and using them to direct computer science tools including crawling, searching and information extraction over many steps until an acceptable resulting intelligence package is achieved. We evaluate our approach using two case study experiments, each based on a one-week duration criminology investigation (aided by conservation science experts) and evaluate both named entity (NE) directed graph visualization and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modelling. NE directed graph visualization consistently outperforms topic modelling for discovering connected entities in the long tail of online forums and marketplaces.","PeriodicalId":435721,"journal":{"name":"Companion Publication of the 12th ACM Conference on Web Science","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130691733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
R. Bwana, André Baart, V. D. Boer, F. Lenfant, N. Morisho, M. Westermann-Behaylo, M. Worring
With modern supply chains spanning the globe, materials or components that companies use in their products may be sourced from areas prone to injustice and human rights abuse. A major challenge stakeholders face is the gathering of accurate data regarding producers in these areas. In this paper we introduce CARPA, a web application designed to gather reports on incidents and initiatives related to responsible production through crowd-sourcing. We describe its user-centric iterative process of development as well as its design and how this is influenced by the application context. Finally we discuss the challenges faced and the way forward.
{"title":"Developing a Crowdsourcing Application for Responsible Production in Africa","authors":"R. Bwana, André Baart, V. D. Boer, F. Lenfant, N. Morisho, M. Westermann-Behaylo, M. Worring","doi":"10.1145/3394332.3402829","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3394332.3402829","url":null,"abstract":"With modern supply chains spanning the globe, materials or components that companies use in their products may be sourced from areas prone to injustice and human rights abuse. A major challenge stakeholders face is the gathering of accurate data regarding producers in these areas. In this paper we introduce CARPA, a web application designed to gather reports on incidents and initiatives related to responsible production through crowd-sourcing. We describe its user-centric iterative process of development as well as its design and how this is influenced by the application context. Finally we discuss the challenges faced and the way forward.","PeriodicalId":435721,"journal":{"name":"Companion Publication of the 12th ACM Conference on Web Science","volume":"74 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131097038","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}