This paper focuses on changing reading characteristics and presents a study among a group of expert readers. Considering technological bases of reading and applying corporeal and material perspectives, this study examines manners in which proficient readers handle printed and digital texts, attempting to explain differences in digital and paper–based reading.
Video pollution on the Web
by Fabricio Benevenuto, Tiago Rodrigues, Virgílio A.F. Almeida, Jussara Almeida, Marcos Gonçalves, Keith Ross
Videos have become a predominant part of users’ daily lives on the Web, especially with the emergence of video sharing services, such as YouTube. Part of the huge success of multimedia content in the Web is due to the change on the user perspective from content consumer to content creator. However, by allowing users to publicize their independently generated content, video sharing networks become susceptible to different types of pollution. As example, users can pollute the system spreading video messages containing undesirable content. Users can also associate metadata with videos in attempt to fool video search engines (i.e., popular tags, but unrelated to the content).
Social network sites (SNS) like MySpace seem to play a role in friendships and wider relationships for many people. Emotion expression can be important in relationship maintenance but little is known about the role of emotion in SNSs, other than positive comments being widespread in MySpace. Is emotion typically reciprocated, and do Friends express and/or receive similar levels of emotion expression to each other?
This study investigates teenage attitudes towards unofficial versus mainstream media as a source of information. It starts from three unproven premises. First, that young people place more trust in unofficial online news than in mainstream media, because they feel a greater ownership of the cyberworld. Second, due to a perception of authoritarian control over Singapore’s mainstream media, truth and accuracy in unofficial sources are of secondary importance to a feeling of ownership. Third, teenagers’ need for accuracy is secondary to their need for ownership and differentiation; and, unofficial information sources are a badge of identity worn by the young.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of Wikipedia’s internal quality control mechanism, the “featured article” process, which assesses articles against a stringent set of criteria. To this end, scholars were asked to evaluate the quality and accuracy of Wikipedia featured articles within their area of expertise. A total of 22 usable responses were collected from a variety of disciplines. Out of the Wikipedia articles assessed, only 12 of 22 were found to pass Wikipedia’s own featured article criteria, indicating that Wikipedia’s process is ineffective. This finding suggests both that Wikipedia must take steps to improve its featured article process and that scholars interested in studying Wikipedia should be careful not to naively believe its assertions of quality.
A family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success. Read more »
Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.
A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?
Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.
What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?
Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).
FreePint Family
Quilting big data threads
The fallacy of information overload
Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure? 
