In this session, we talk about the mobile and social web, and how it shapes economy, individual behavior and well-being, political events, and society as a whole.

1. Introduction to Web Science:
Mobile and Social Media

3. Oldest public
university in US
(1795)
28,000 students

6. And you?

7. Class Website
https://tarheels.live/webscience/

8. Structure of the Course: 5 Online Sessions
Intro toWeb
Science andWeb
History
Web Histories (individual)
Homework:Summarizea
WebSiConference paper
01
TheSocialWeb
Homework:Writeup /
elevator pitch of initial Idea
(one paragraph)
02
Web Science
Research
Hands-on skills practice with
Zotero, Scopus
Studentscreateoutline
Homework: Presentation
03
Web-Based
Learning
E-Learning, Instructional
Design, Tools,Technologies,
Theories
StudentPresentationSession
(1)
10-20minutepresentation
04
Web Futures
FutureStudies and Trend
Reports
StudentPresentationSession
(2)
10-20minutepresentation
Homework: Final Paper (10-
15 pages)
05

9. Analyze the
interplay of
technology
and behavior
“Web Science is the study of
the most complex piece of
technology ever created. The
Web comprises billions of
technical and human
components operating
globally, with each piece
subtly influencing the others.
Multiple expert perspectives
across scientific disciplines
are required to build an
understanding of how the
Web changes society just as
much as society changes the
Web”.
Web Science Trust,
http://webscience.org/

10. Statista is a German online portal for statistics,
which makes data collected by market and
opinion research institutes and data derived from
the economic sector and official statistics available
in English, French, German and Spanish. It has 600
employees and clients around the world – one of
which is UNC Chapel Hill. It also offers creative
commons infographics.
Statista

11. 2021: 4.66 billion active
internet users worldwide -
59.5 percent of the global
population.
92.6 percent (4.32 billion)
accessed the internet
(partly) via mobile devices.

13. What are people most likely doing when
they use the Internet on their phone?

15. Share of global internet users who have performed selected online activities in the past month via mobile as of
1st quarter 2019

16. Usage of
mobile
apps in
Australia in
3rd quarter
2020, by
category

17. Daily time
spent on
social
networking
by internet
users
worldwide
from 2012
to 2022

18. What are social media?

19. Franklin & Harmelen (2007)
Systematization
(Franklin &
Harmelen,
2007)
• Weblogs
• Wikis
• Social Bookmarking
• Social Networking & Social
Presence
• Collaborative Editing
• Syndification & Notification
(RSS, Mash-Ups)
• Broadly used to describe any number
of technological systems related to
collaboration and community.
• While it appears that a specific
definition may be elusive, social media
is often described by example.
• Social networking sites, blogs, wikis,
multimedia platforms, virtual game
worlds, and virtual social worlds
Tess (2013)
What are social media?

20. Social Media & Web 2.0 Principles
Dynamic
development:
"perpetual beta"
"The long tail":
new marketing
strategies
Decentralization:
Mash-Ups, P2P,
APIs
Folksonomy:
tagging instead of
taxonomy
Data instead of
features lead to
rich user
experience
Radical Trust:
Social editing,
unfiltered
participation
Constant remix
RSS feeds, Shares,
Comments
Desktop on the
Net
What are social media? – Traits and Economy

21. Environments are not planned in detail, but molded by
the users. Monolithic infrastructures give way to
building blocks and transient structures.

22. Commenting on and passing along information
instead of researching and gathering

23. Collective Filtering & Social Navigation
(goodreads.com): a service improves as more and
more people use it.

24. User-generated Content (influencers): The Net
stores private data. The boundaries between
private and public disappear.

25. Memes: oftentimes humorous combinations of image and text that are
spread across social media. Coined by Richard Dawkins (1976) as the
cultural equivalent of a gene, memes originally refer to ideas, symbols,
or practices that spread by natural selection. Similarly, in the social
media sphere, memes describe feelings, experiences, and behavior.

26. Social Capital (LinkedIn): Activities, relationships,
and networks become transparent. Profiles don't
just serve as a basis for adaption, but become the
content themselves.

27. Walled Garden: “closed
or exclusive information
services, content, or
media on platforms”
(Paterson, 2012, pg. 97)

28. In 50 years, social media in 2021 will look like the
tobacco industry in 1960 -- they knowingly offered
an addictive product, and, worse, hid the damage
the addiction caused, while actively tried to deepen
the dependency. Vinay Prasad (2021)

29. Why are social media
attractive?
Because we are
social creatures!

30. Why (and How) Social Media Work: Jonah
Berger

31. Social Influence
“Looking at others for information is a key thing
we do often. It’s a shortcut to judgment. It saves
us time and effort to look to others in what they
have done previously. […] This inference is much
stronger when people have less time or
motivation. If we don’t have a lot of time to make
the decision and we’re not very motivated, we’re
much more likely to turn to others to help us make
that decision”. (Berger, Coursera, 2018)

32. Social influence is the effect of our
social environment on our behavior
and decision making.

33. STEPPS
1. Social Currency
2. Triggers
3. Emotion
4. Public
5. Practical Value
6. Stories
Each of these dimensions is a psychological driver of what people talk and
share online.

34. Social Currency: Just like other status symbols (car, clothing),
things we say and share online affect how other people see us.
We are likely to share something that makes us look
knowledgeable, feel special, or appear virtuous.

35. Triggers: It is not just whether we like something or not
that influences our decision to share, it is whether we are
thinking about it or not. The environment we are in,
and how the message links to it, influences sharing.

36. Emotions: When we care, and the more we care, the more likely
we are to share. The emotion does not necessarily need to be
positive to create emotional arousal. Anger and anxiety actually
increase sharing, as does happy, funny content.

37. Public: If something is built to show, it’s built to grow. The
easier it is to see, the easier it is to imitate, for example:
‘53 million people have already liked this’.

38. Practical Value: People don’t just share things that make
them look good, they share things that they think will
help others and make others better off. Information that
seems useful will drive people to share.

39. Stories: Good marketing stories are like a Trojan
horse. They act as vessels or carriers of information.
When parents put their kids to bed at night, they do not
tell bedtime facts, they tell bedtime stories. Stories are
the currency of conversation. Good stories carry ideas.

40. The World Health Organization (WHO) has referred
to the scope and speed of the spread of false
information linked to COVID-19 as an ‘infodemic’
that needs swift addressing.

41. Social Media and Fake News

42. Politicized and controversial term, used both to
criticize mainstream media and to refer to
problematic content online.

43. A small percentage of posts in Myanmar were anti-
Rohingya conspiracy theories or hate speech, but
those posts helped shape the narrative that fueled
violence and support for ethnic cleansing.

44. We see a lot less misinformation than we
think we do, but are far more affected by it
than we care to admit.

45. Social Media Bots
• Easy to build
• Leveraging AI
• Amplify information
• Discussions of influence
on political events such
as the US election of
2016, the Brexit vote
and the Ukraine conflict
https://www.labnol.org/internet/write-twitter-bot/27902/

46. Fake News Examples: Momo Hoax

47. https://hoaxy.iuni.iu.edu/

49. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/appsextensions/#gsc.tab=0
Media Bias Google Chrome Extension

50. Three Strategies for social media companies
Deplatforming Demonetizing
Labeling as
’Misinformation’

51. It’s our attention that is being hacked:
Better to do twenty 30-second checks than
two five-minute checks.

52. What to check? Everything you share,
everything you have a strong reaction to.

53. It’s like brushing your teeth. It’s better to
brush every day than brush thoroughly,
but only on the weekend.

54. Not everyone needs to have this habit. It’s
like vaccination – there’s a certain level
that gives you herd immunity. We want a
herd immunity to nonsense.

56. Quick Fact Check Process: 4 Moves
1. Check for previous work
2. Go upstream to the source
3. Read laterally
4. Circle back

57. Social media create a constant
segue for social influence.

58. ‘Echo Chamber’: Social Network algorithms steer us
toward articles that reflect our own ideological
preferences.

59. ‘When I'm looking for something
to watch on YouTube, I feel the
walls of the algorithm closing in
on me’. (Stephen Downes, 2021)

60. When advertising is
the business model,
users are the
product
The problem is not the Internet or social media in a
media in a broad sense but rather specifically the use
specifically the use of the algorithms. When Google
When Google and Facebook and others went to the
went to the advertising business model anytime
anytime anybody did anything, anytime anybody
anybody connected with somebody else it was
it was financed by third party whose motivation was to
motivation was to manipulate what happened. Then
happened. Then the whole business model was about
model was about how to manipulate more and more.
more and more. What that results in is people being
people being directed rather than exploring and that
exploring and that makes the world small. That is
small. That is fundamental. You cannot make these
make these algorithms better. You can’t say we want a
say we want a better form of constant incremental
incremental manipulation of every person. The whole
person. The whole concept from the start is poison.
is poison.
Jaron Lanier (2021)

61. Homophilia, the psychological tendency to surround ourselves
with others who share our perspectives and opinions about the
world, is an organizing principle underpinning many social media
sites in which algorithms amplify our preference for sameness.

62. Personal relations, may become less meaningful due to
lack of face-to-face communication and dialogue even
though sharing (photos, tweets and documents) is a
prominent cultural norm. (Chryssa Themelis, 2018)

63. Mental Health & Social Media
This statistic presents the negative
social media effects according to
teenagers in the United States as
of April 2018, by emotional well-
being.
According to the findings, 35
percent of teenagers with low
social-emotional well-being
reported to have been cyber
bullied when using social media,
while in comparison only five
percent of teenagers with high
social-emotional well-being stated
similarly.

64. Instagram: Toxic?
https://www.aace.org/review/digital-well-being-are-devices-
overwhelming-or-extending-our-minds/
”The concept of digital wellbeing (mental and
physical health related to the use of digital tools)
assumes that private and professional life is
saturated by technologies that do not always serve
their purpose but may, at times, function as an
obstacle, distracting students and educators from
their daily tasks, damaging interpersonal relations
and encouraging undemocratic values”.
https://madrascourier.com/opinion/instagram-is-toxic-for-teens-heres-why/

65. http://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/facebook.pdf
2019 Stanford study: Quitting for 4 weeks
improves self-reported well-being

66. Over to you…. The web (and we) are out of shape. More polarized, less
connected, less mentally and physically healthy. Web Scientists to the
rescue! What can we do about the state of the Web? Come up with
solutions. Can you think of policies, regulations, economic incentives,
programs, products, strategies, …