Most areas of today's society are dependent on the web in some way. This raises the issue of the web as an object of scientific study on its own. The presentation will introduce the emerging scientific discipline of Web Science, as a way to study the web as a whole, on a systems level and in an inter-disciplinary way. The presentation will cover the motivation for Web Science, discuss the different goals and definitions of Web Science, and present some current contributions of Web Science.

1. Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Web Science:
Motivation, Goals and Contributions
Benjamin Heitmann
 Copyright 2009 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved.
Chapter

2. Introduction
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 Society today is dependent on the Web
 Affects areas besides computer
science:
 politics
 law and economics
media and the arts

 very different situation 10/15 years
ago
 Web Science asks:
Should we be studying the Web by
itself?
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3. Outline
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 Motivation:
Why Web Science?
 Goals and definitions:
Definitions of Web Science and intended goals
 Contributions:
tangible results from Web Science
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4. Why is Web Science necessary?
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 The Web affects most areas of
today’s society
 Society is dependent on the
Web
 The Web is the substrate for
our society
 Computer Science is no longer
enough to understand the Web
 Many disciplines need to
contribute to this © Flickr user “denn”
understanding
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5. Society on the Web: Media
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“A number of proposals have been put forward which would
avoid this in whole or in part and which would, we argue,
be at least as effective as Nama in laying the ground for
such a banking system. These models have been well
discussed through a variety of blogs on the web and in the
mainstream media.”
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6. Society on the Web (2)
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 Dot-Com Bubble:
Bust effects whole economy in
2000/2001
 Digital Rights Management:
Amazon deletes book under
customers nose
 Privacy: facebook apps (e.g.
quizzes) steal and sell users
data
 Freedom of speech: Web 2.0
sites used to enable and spy on
Iranian opposition
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7. Society on the Web (3)
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Politics:
Obama campaign was won
with small donations (less
then 100 dollars) given
through Web site
Humanities and Arts: © Shepard Fairey (obeygiant.com)
The rise of network culture:
“the network has become
the dominant cultural logic”
“Networked Publics”,
Kazys Varnelis (Editor), 2008
© http://networkedbook.org
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8. Defining Web Science
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Different views of Web Science and its goals:
1. Systems-level view of the web
2. Study of interplay between engineering and
social factors
3. Measuring the web
4. Predicting the future web
5. Outline for educating the next generation
6. Encourage collaboration
7. Establishing a new scientific method
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9. Systems-level view of the Web
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 Goal: Holistic
view of the
web
 No
partitioning
 No
delegation of
research on
one area to
only one
discipline
 Problems
usually can
not be solved
by just one
discipline
© Web Science Research Initiative
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10. Web Science Process Model
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Goal: Study interplay between
© Lawrence Lessig
engineering and social
factors.
Increase in complexity:
result is transition from micro
to macro effects
Examples:
first 8 years of the Web
Wikipedia
Myspace, Twitter and Facebook
Source:
“Web science: an interdisciplinary approach
to understanding the web”, Hendler,
Shadboldt, Hall, Berners-Lee, Weitzner,
Communications of the ACM (2008)
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11. Measuring the Web
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 Goal: gather empirical data and
statistics about the Web or
parts of it
 Goal: create models for
different properties of the Web Source: “Graph
structure in the
 In and Out-degree distribution Web”, Broder,
Kumar et al.
 Characterising connectivity of
pages on the web
 Power laws for incoming links,
© Clay Shirky
e.g. to blogs
 Growth: 7 million pages a day
(2005)
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12. Predicting the future Web
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 Goal: predict why technologies
are successful on the Web
 Combine quantitative and
© University of Southamptin
qualitative statements for
predictions
 Next big thing after twitter:
Augmented reality?
 Will Linked Data take off?
 Could the Web
exist without TBL
inventing it?
© Wired magazine
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13. Web Science as Education
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Goal: Develop a curriculum
for teaching a combination of
disciplines.
Next generation of
researchers will have a unified
perspective.
Other disciplines which
started as interdisciplinary
approaches:
computer science
life sciences
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14. Encouraging collaboration
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 Goal: provide venues and
incentives for researchers
from different disciplines to
collaborate.
 It is hard to get funding for
interdisciplinary research
 Approaches combining more
then two disciplines are rare
 Current venues:
 annual Web Science conference
 workshops, e.g. at WWW2008
 WSRI Journal
© Web Science Research Initiative, both pictures
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15. Establishing a new scientific method
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 Goal:develop a new language
and methodology for making
statements about the Web on a
systems level
 language: scientists from the
different disciplines must be
able to communicate with each
other
 methodology:
focus on empirical basis
take quantitative and qualitative
findings into account
allow normative and extrapolating Source: Futures studies article on Wikipedia
methods
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16. Contributions of Web Science (1)
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 Quantitative measurements of the Web:
e.g. “Graph structure in the Web”, Broder, Kumar et al.
 Social Networking Patterns: Social Drivers for
creating and sustaining communities
“Theories of communication networks”, Monge, Contractor
Source: Noshir Contractor, slides at http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/sna-workshop/documents/20076NoshMaryland.pdf
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17. Contributions of Web Science (2)
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 Qualitative case studies (just a selection)
Philosophy: “The Devil’s Long Tail: Religious Moderation and
Extremism on the Web”, O'Hara, Stevens (2009)
applying the Long Tail theory to religious markets on the Web
Anthropology: "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook
and MySpace", Boyd (2007)
Initial user population shapes character of social networks, not just
technical features
 Web Science Process Model: “Introducing new features to Wikipedia - Case
studies for Web science”, Schindler, Vrandecic (2009)
How the Wikipedia community influences the features of the Wikipedia
software and vice versa
Governance: “Designing effective regulation for the Dark side of the
Web”, Richter, Brown (2009)
Overview of government regulation, proposal of using NGOs for
more effective regulation
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18. Addendum
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 Acknowledgements: My visit to the WebScience
Summer school was funded by:
Unit for Information Mining and Retrieval (UIMR)
Data Intensive Infrastructures Unit (UDI2)
 Show of hands for collaboration
 Other questions?
 Starting points for literature:
“Web science: an interdisciplinary approach to understanding
the web”, Hendler, Shadboldt, Hall, Berners-Lee, Weitzner,
Communications of the ACM (2008)
 Web Science conference proceedings (websci09.org)
 http://webscience.org/publications/
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