Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Research Topics: A Multidisciplinary Analysis of Online Communities to Detect Policy-Making Indicators

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Advances on P2P, Parallel, Grid, Cloud and Internet Computing (3PGCIC 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 96))

Abstract

This study follows a multidisciplinary approach which combines text mining techniques, data visualization, and educational research to focus online knowledge communities. Recently, social media shifted information from “official” source to user-generated content changing knowledge building practices. Starting from a large textual dataset, created using mining techniques, these authors build an interactive visual tool to explore conversation of an Italian Facebook group. The aim of this research is to build a web-based tool, which allows exploration and navigation through conversations and topics, to understand the significance of interactions in the research community. Results show that members’ participation in the community conversations has grown in the course of time. Comments published from 1 January 2012 to 31 December 2016 allow us to identify seven topics for different fields of interest in the ROARS community. Despite positive results, further investigations are required to give weight to the empirical evidence.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 169.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Ahmad, A.N.: Is Twitter a useful tool for journalists? J. Media Pract. 11(2), 145–155 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Sheffer, M.L., Schultz, B.: Paradigm shift or passing fad? Twitter and sports journalism. Int. J. Sport Commun. 3(4), 472–484 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Hermida, A.: # Journalism: reconfiguring journalism research about Twitter, one tweet at a time. Digit. J. 1(3), 295–313 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Shah, D.V., Cho, J., Eveland, W.P., Kwak, N.: Information and expression in a digital age: modeling Internet effects on civic participation. Commun. Res. 32(5), 531–565 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. McLuhan, M., Nevitt, B.: Take Today; The Executive as Dropout. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York (1972)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Toffler, A.: The Third Wave. Bantam Books, New York (1980)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Lévy, P.: L’intelligenza collettiva. Per un’antropologia del cyberspazio. Feltrinelli, Milano (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Pea, R.D.: Seeing what we build together: distributed multimedia learning environments for transformative communication. J. Learn. Sci. 13(3), 285–299 (1994)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Preece, J.J.: Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability. Wiley, England (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Jonassen, D.H., Peak, K.L., Wilson, B.J.: Learning with Technology: A Constructivist Perspective. Paperback, New York (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Chism, N.: Handbook for instructor on the use of electronic class discussion. Office of Faculty and TA Development, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Jenlink, P., Carr, A.A.: Conversation as a medium for change in education. Educ. Technol. 36(1), 31–38 (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Knowles, M., Holton, E., Swanson, R.: The Adult Learner: The Definitive Classic in Adult Education and Human Resource Development, 5th edn. Gulf Publishing, Houston (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Siemens, G.: Connectivism: a learning theory for the digital age. Int. J. Instr. Technol. Dist. Learn. 2(1) (2005) http://www.itdl.org/journal/jan_05/article01.htm

  15. Scardamalia, M., Bereiter, C.: Computer support for knowledge-building communities. J. Learn. Sci. 3(3), 265–283 (1994)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Gherardi, S., Nicolini, D.: The organizational learning of safety in communities of practice. J. Manage. Inquiry 9(1), 7–18 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Vitale, P., Guarasci, R., Iannotta, I.S.: Visualizing research topics in Facebook conversations. Multidisc. Digit. Publ. Inst. Proc. 1(9), 895 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Wallach, H.M.: Topic modeling: beyond bag-of-words. In: Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Machine Learning, pp. 977–984. ACM, New York (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Shneiderman, B.: The eyes have it: a task by data type taxonomy for information visualizations. In: Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages, pp. 336–343. IEEE (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Jurafsky, D., Martin, J.H.: Speech & Language Processing. Pearson Education, London (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Blei, D.M., Ng, A.Y., Jordan, M.I.: Latent dirichlet allocation. J. Mach. Learn. Res. 3, 993–1022 (2003)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  22. Blei, D.M., Lafferty, J.D.: Dynamic topic models. In: Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Machine Learning, pp. 113–120. ACM, New York (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Gretarsson, B., O’Donovan, J., Bostandjiev, S., Höllerer, T., Asuncion, A., Newman D., et al.: TopicNets: visual analysis of large text corpora with topic modeling. ACM Trans. Intell. Syst. Technol. (TIST) 3(2), 1–26 (2012). http://www.datalab.uci.edu/papers/topicnets.pdf

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Havre, S., Hetzler, E., Whitney, P., Nowell, L.: Themeriver: visualizing thematic changes in large document collections. IEEE Trans. Visual Comput. Graph. 8(1), 9–20 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Wei, F., Liu, S., Song, Y., Pan, S., Zhou, M. X., Qian, W., et al: TIARA: a visual exploratory text analytic system. In: Proceedings of the 16th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, pp. 153–162. ACM, New York (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Cui, W., Liu, S., Tan, L., Shi, C., Song, Y., Gao, Z.J., et al.: Textflow: Towards better understanding of evolving topic in text. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 17(12), 2412–2421 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Liu, X., Derudder, B., Csomós, G., Taylor, P.: Featured graphic: mapping shifting hierarchical and regional tendencies in an urban network through alluvial diagrams. Environ. Plann. A 45(5), 1005–1007 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Riehmann, P., Hanfler, M., Froehlich, B.: Interactive Sankey diagrams. In: Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization, INFOVIS, 233–240 IEEE (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Shneiderman, B., Wattenberg, M.: Ordered treemap layouts. In: INFOVIS. IEEE (2001)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Human, Philosophic and Education Science, Fisciano, Italy

    Iolanda Sara Iannotta

  2. Department of Political and Communication Science, Fisciano, Italy

    Pierluigi Vitale

Authors
  1. Iolanda Sara Iannotta
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Pierluigi Vitale
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pierluigi Vitale .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information and Communication Engineering, Fukuoka Institute of Technology, Fukuoka, Japan

    Leonard Barolli

  2. University of Antwerp, Antwerpen, Belgium

    Peter Hellinckx

  3. Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand

    Juggapong Natwichai

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Iannotta, I.S., Vitale, P. (2020). Research Topics: A Multidisciplinary Analysis of Online Communities to Detect Policy-Making Indicators. In: Barolli, L., Hellinckx, P., Natwichai, J. (eds) Advances on P2P, Parallel, Grid, Cloud and Internet Computing. 3PGCIC 2019. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 96. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33509-0_22

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33509-0_22

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-33508-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-33509-0

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation