We work on a theory to facilitate data analysis for discovery of meaningful collective information sharing patterns in very large data streams. By focusing only on coincidence of information occurrence, we can capture and analyse emergent collective action across system boundaries and independent from social network contexts. References: Markus Luczak-Roesch, Ramine Tinati, Kieron O'Hara, and Nigel Shadbolt. 2015. Socio-technical Computation. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference Companion on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW'15 Companion). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 139-142. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2685553.2698991 Markus Luczak-Roesch, Ramine Tinati, and Nigel Shadbolt. 2015. When Resources Collide: Towards a Theory of Coincidence in Information Spaces. To appear in WWW’15 Companion, May 18–22, 2015, Florence, Italy. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2740908.2743973

1. When resources collide: Towards a theory of coincidence in
information spaces
Markus Luczak-Roesch, Ramine Tinati, Nigel Shadbolt
@mluczak | http://sociam.org

2. Does the accumulated information propagation behaviour on the
Web form giant purposeful processes?
Source:MichaelDales,https://goo.gl/IKXs4X,CCBY-NC2.0

3. 2-state model infinite-state model
HF LF
[1] Kleinberg, Jon. "Bursty and hierarchical structure in streams." Data
Mining and Knowledge Discovery 7.4 (2003): 373-397.
Time
Numberofobserveddocuments
Content streams as automata [1]

4. “An informational
cascade occurs when it
is optimal for an
individual, having
observed the actions of
those ahead him, to follow
the behavior of the
preceding individual
without regard to his own
information.” [2]
[3]
[2] Bikhchandani, Sushil, David Hirshleifer, and Ivo Welch. "A theory of fads, fashion, custom, and cultural
change as informational cascades." Journal of political Economy (1992): 992-1026.
[3] Cheng, Justin, et al. "Can cascades be predicted?." Proceedings of the 23rd international conference
on World wide web. International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee, 2014.

5. We can observe situations when online communication does not
happen along explicit social ties (especially in critical situations
when time to make decisions is rare). Instead of talking
explicitly with each other people are
broadcasting about the same event or topic.
Source: United Nations Development Programme, https://goo.gl/Z1uXdV, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

6. System A
System B
System C
Collective action?
t

7. t
Transcendental
information cascades

8. Transcendental
information cascades
t
#A
#A#B
#A#B#C
#B#D
#C

9. Building transcendental information cascades

10. Zooniverse case study
40.5%
Talkcontributions
Classifications
PH SG SW NN GZ CC PF SF AP WS
91%
Vocabularyshift
2
0
6
4
10
8
Microposts

11. Capturing the unintended action resulting from information
sharing activities of human collectives.
t
#transit
#transit
#eclipsingbinary
#transit
#eclipsingbinary
KID
10864656
#eclipsingbinary
#glitch
KID
10864656
t
Document stream
Transcendental Information Cascade

12. Emergent informational traces

13. Emergent informational traces

14. Cascade motifs as an indicator of state?

15. Cascade motifs as an indicator of state?
?

16. t
t
F1
Fn
…
…
C11
C21
C22
C23
t0
t1
t2
t3
t4
t5
t7
t8
t6
t6
-­‐
t0
t2
-­‐
t1
t8
-­‐
t2
t4
-­‐
t2
t7
-­‐
t4
t5
-­‐
t3
t1
-­‐
t0
t2
-­‐
t1
t4
-­‐
t1
t4
-­‐
t3
t6
-­‐
t5
t8
-­‐
t6
t7
-­‐
t4
t5
-­‐
t4
t3
-­‐
t2
Current and future work

17. t
F1
Fn
…
…
C11
C21
C22
C23
Formalising the
multiple possible
representations of
a system at any time
and their relationships.
Not all representing
purposeful action but
reflecting useful
informational properties.

18. By focusing only on the
coincidence of
information occurrence,
we can capture and
analyse emergent
collective action across
system boundaries and
independent from social
network contexts.
Markus Luczak-Roesch
@mluczak
http://markus-luczak.de
Source:GiuliaForsythe,http://goo.gl/6hpZ0W,CCBY-NC-SA2.0

19. References
• Markus Luczak-Roesch, Ramine Tinati, Kieron O'Hara, and Nigel
Shadbolt. 2015. Socio-technical Computation. In
Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference Companion on Computer
Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW'15
Companion). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 139-142. http://
doi.acm.org/10.1145/2685553.2698991
• Markus Luczak-Roesch, Ramine Tinati, and Nigel Shadbolt. 2015.
When Resources Collide: Towards a Theory of
Coincidence in Information Spaces. To appear in
WWW’15 Companion, May 18–22, 2015, Florence, Italy. http://
dx.doi.org/10.1145/2740908.2743973