Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Addressing universal access in social networks: an inclusive search mechanism

  • Long paper
  • Published:
Universal Access in the Information Society Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Social network services (SNSs) have brought new possibilities and challenges to the design of software environments that respect people’s cultural differences. These systems may represent an opportunity for social and digital inclusion. However, search mechanisms in these systems impose serious barriers for people in the process of acquiring digital literacy. One of the barriers is the difficulty of using the adequate terms/keywords to perform content searches. This paper presents an approach to allow ordinary, non-technology proficient people to access the content of a network through the use of search parameters that make sense to them. The proposal is grounded on Semantic Web technologies (Web ontology) combined with Organizational Semiotics concepts and methods to identify the users’ profile and language. A case study was conducted with the search mechanism integrated into a SNS, and a preliminary evaluation reveals the advantages and drawbacks of the approach.

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

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. http://www.who.int/classifications/icd/en/.

  2. www.vilanarede.org.br.

  3. www.nied.unicamp.br/ecidadania.

  4. Typical parties that occur in some regions of Brazil in the winter season.

  5. http://glaros.dtc.umn.edu/gkhome/views/cluto/.

  6. Protege.stanford.edu/plugins/prompt/prompt.html.

  7. Drupal.drupal.org.

References

  1. Boyd, D.M., Ellison, N.B.: Social network sites: definition, history, and scholarship. J. Comput. Mediat. Commun. 13, 210–230 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Baranauskas, M.C.C., Souza, C.S.: Participative and universal access to knowledge for the Brazilian citizen. Grand Challenges in Computer Science Research in Brazil—2006–2016. Available at: <www.sbc.org.br/index.php?option=com_jdownloads&Itemid=195&task=finish&cid=12&catid=50> (2006). Accessed Jan 2011

  3. Ramachandran, D., Kam, M., Chiu, J., Canny, J., Franke, J.L.: Social dynamics of early stage co-design in developing regions. In: Proc. of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1087–1096. California, USA (2007)

  4. Neris, V.P.A., Almeida, L.D., Miranda, L.C., Hayashi, E., Baranauskas, M.C.C.: Towards a socially-constructed meaning for inclusive social network systems. In: International Conference on Informatics and Semiotics in Organisations, pp. 247–254. Beijing (2009)

  5. Reis, J.C., Bonacin, R., Baranauskas, M.C.C.: Prospecting an inclusive search mechanism for social network services. ICEIS 2010—revised selected papers. In: Filipe, J., Cordeiro, J. (eds.) Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing (LNBIP), vol. 73, pp. 555–570 (2011)

  6. Berners-Lee, T., Hendler, J., Lassila, O.: The Semantic Web. Scientific American, May 2001 issue (2001)

  7. Wang, W., Barnaghi, P.M., Bargiela, A.: Search with meanings: an overview of semantic search systems. Int. J. Commun. SIWN 3, 76–82 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  8. OWL Web Ontology Language: W3C recommendation. <www.w3.org/TR/owl-features> (2004) Accessed Oct 2010

  9. Reis, J.C., Bonacin, R., Baranauskas, M.C.C.: A semiotic-based approach to the design of web ontologies. In: Proc. of 12th International Conference on Informatics and Semiotics in Organisations—ICISO 2010, pp. 60–67. Reading, UK (2010)

  10. Baranauskas, M.C.C.: e-Cidadania: Systems and Methods for the Constitution of a Culture mediated by Information and Communication Technology. Research Proposal for the Microsoft Research-FAPESP Institute (2007)

  11. Brazilian Internet Steering Committee.: Survey on the use of information and communication technologies in Brazil. <www.cgi.br/english/index.htm> (2010). Accessed Feb 2012

  12. Internet World Stats: <http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats3.htm> (2010). Accessed Feb 2012

  13. Institute Paulo Montenegro: Indicator of functional literacy. <www.ipm.org.br> (2009). Accessed Feb 2012

  14. Reis, J.C., Baranauskas, M.C.C., Bonacin, R.: Busca em Sistemas Sócio-Culturais Online: Desafios e Recomendações. In SeminárioIntegrado de Software e Hardware (SEMISH). In: Proc of the XXX Congress of the Computer Brazilian Society, vol. 1, pp. 380–394. SBC, Belo Horizonte (2010) (In Portuguese)

  15. Peirce, C.S.: Collected Papers. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1931–1958)

  16. OSW: The circulation document in the organizational semiotic workshop. In: The 1st International Workshop on Organizational Semiotics, Enschede, The Netherlands (1995)

  17. Stamper, R.K.: Organisational semiotics: informatics http://www.cc.gatech.edu/projects/disl/courses/8803/2008/project/project_deliverables/group22/final_report.pdf without the Computer? In: Liu, K., Clarke, R., Andersen, P.B., Stamper, R.K. (eds.) In-formation, Organisation and Technology: Studies in Organisational Semiotics. Kluwer, Dordrecht (2000)

  18. Liu, K.: Semiotics in Information Systems Engineering. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2000)

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  19. Stamper, R.K.: Social norms in requirements analysis—an outline of MEASUR. In: Jirotka, M., Goguen, J., Bickerton, M. (eds.) Requirements Engineering, Technical and Social Aspects. Academic Press, New York (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Salter, A., Liu, K.: Using semantic analysis and norm analysis to model organisations. In: 4th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems, pp. 847–850 (2002)

  21. Liu, K., Sun, L., Fu, Y.: Ontological modeling of content management and provision. Inf. Softw. Technol. 50(11), 1155–1164 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Gibson, J.J.: The theory of affordances. In: Shaw, R., Bransford, J. (eds.) Perceiving, Acting, and Knowing. Erlbaum, Hillsdale (1977)

  23. Reis, J.C., Bonacin, R., Baranauskas, M.C.C.: From Ontology Charts to Web Ontologies: Heuristics and Transformation Rules. Technical Report (IC-11-02), Institute of Computing, University of Campinas, Brazil. Available at www.ic.unicamp.br/~reltech (2011)

  24. Santos, T.M., Bonacin, R., Baranauskas, M.C.C., Rodrigues, M.A.: A model driven architecture tool based on semantic analysis method. In: Proc. of the 10th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems—ICEIS 2008, vol. 2, pp. 305–310. Barcelona, Spain (2008)

  25. Reis, J.C., Bonacin, R., Baranauskas, M.C.C.: Ferramentas e Técnicas de Mineração de Texto em Redes Sociais Inclusivas: Promovendo Meios para o Acesso Universal ao Conhecimento. In: Proceedings of the IADIS Ibero-Americana WWW/Internet 2010 (CIAWI 2010), pp. 155–162. Carvoeiro, Algarve, Portugal (2010) (In Portuguese)

  26. Hendker, J., Berners-Lee, T.: From the semantic web to social machines: a research challenge for AI on the world wide web. Artif. Intell. 174, 156–160 (2010). Elsevier

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Medelyan, O., Witten, I.H.: Domain-independent automatic keyphrase indexing with small training sets. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 59(7), 1026–1040 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Lopes, L., Fernandes, P., Vieira, R., Fedrizzi, G.: ExATOlp: an automatic tool for term extraction from Portuguese language corpora. In: Proc. of the 4th Language and Technology Conference, pp. 427–431 (2009)

  29. Reis, J.C., Bonacin, R., Baranauskas, M.C.C.: Modeling Meanings from Inclusive Social Network Services. Technical Report (IC-11-03), Institute of Computing, University of Campinas, Brazil. Available at www.ic.unicamp.br/~reltech (2011)

  30. Yu, B., Singh, M.P.: Searching social networks. In: Proc. of the 2th International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, pp. 65–72. ACM Press, New York, NY, USA (2003)

  31. Vieira, M.V., Fonseca, B.M., Damazio, R., Golgher, P.B., Reis, D.C., Neto, B.R.: Efficient search ranking in social networks. In: Proc. of the 16th ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, pp. 563–572. Lisbon, Portugal (2007)

  32. Haynes, J., Perisic, I.: Mapping search relevance to social networks. International conference on knowledge discovery and data mining. In: Proc. of the 3rd Workshop on Social Network Mining and Analysis. Paris, France. Article No 2 (2009)

  33. Pereira, R, Silva, S.R.P.: Folksonomias: uma análise crítica focada na interação e na natureza da técnica. In: Proceedings of the VIII Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, vol. 378, pp. 126–135. Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil (2008)

  34. Kassim, J.M., Rahmany, M.: Introduction to semantic search engine. In: International Conference on Electrical Engineering and Informatics, vol. 02, pp. 380–386. Selangor, Malaysia (2009)

  35. Heflin, J., Hendler, J.: Searching the web with SHOE. Artificial intelligence for web search. In: AAAI Workshop, WS-00-01, pp. 35–40. AAAI Press, Menlo Park, CA (2000)

  36. Guha, R., McCool, R., Miller, E.: Semantic search. In: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on World Wide Web, pp. 700–709. Budapest, Hungary (2003)

  37. Bonino, D., Corno, F., Farinetti, L., Bosca, A.: Ontology driven semantic search. WSEAS Trans. Inf. Sci. Appl. 1, 1597–1605 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  38. Fang, W.-D., Zhang, L., Wang, Y.-X., Dong, S.-B.: Toward a semantic search engine based on ontologies. In: Proc. of the 4th International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, pp. 1913–1918 (2005)

  39. Mangold, C.: A survey and classification of semantic search approaches. Int. J. Metadata Seman. Ontol. 2(1), 23–34 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Wei, W., Barnaghi, P.M., Bargiela, A.: The Anatomy and Design of a Semantic Search Engine. Tech. rep., School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham (2007)

  41. Hoang, H., Tjoa, A.: The state of the art of ontology-based query systems: a comparison of existing approaches. In: Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computing & Informatics, Paper-Nr. 99, 06 (2006)

  42. Hildebrand, M., Ossenbruggen, J., van Hardman, L.: An Analysis of Search-based User Interaction on the Semantic Web. Report, CWI, Amsterdam, Holland (2007)

  43. Choudhari, A., Jain, M., Sinharoy, A., Zhang, M.: SmartSeek: A semantic search in social networks. <www.cc.gatech.edu/projects/disl/courses/8803/2008/project/project_deliverables/group22/final_report.pdf> (2008). Accessed Jan 2011

  44. Buitelaar, P., Cimiano, P., Magnini, B.: Ontology learning from text: an overview. In: Ontology Learning from Text: Methods, Evaluation and Applications, vol. 123 of Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications. IOS Press, Amsterdam (2005)

  45. Mika, P.: Ontologies are us: a unified model of social networks and semantics. In: Proc. of the 4th International Semantic Web Conference, pp. 522–536. LNCS 3729, Springer, Berlin (2005)

  46. Mori, J., Ishizuka, M., Matsuo, Y.: Extracting keyphrases to represent relations in social networks from web. In: Proceedings of the 20th Int. Joint Conf. on Artificial Intelligence Table of Contents, pp. 2820–2825. Hyderabad, India (2007)

  47. Hamasaki, M., et al.: Ontology extraction by collaborative tagging with social networking. In: Proceedings of the 17th International WWW Conference. Beijing, China (2008)

  48. Egger, M., Fischbach, K., Gloor, P., Lang, A, Sprenger, M.: Deriving taxonomies from automatic analysis of group membership structure in large social networks. In: Lecture Notes in Informatics, vol. 154, in Proceedings of Informatik, Lübeck (2009)

  49. Pfeil, U., Zaphiris, P.: Applying qualitative content analysis to study online support communities. J. UAIS 16(1), 1–16 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work was funded by Microsoft Research—FAPESP Institute for IT Research (#2007/54564-1), CNPq/CTI (#680.041/2006-0), and by EcoWeb Project (#560044/2010-0). The authors thank the commitment and collaboration provided by the people of ‘Vila União’ and by the Telecenter ‘Vila Monte Alegre.’ The authors also thank colleagues from CTI Renato Archer, IC/UNICAMP, InterHAD, and NIED/UNICAMP.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Resource Centre for Health Care Technologies (SANTEC), Public Research Centre Henri Tudor, 6, Av. des Hauts-Fourneaux, 4362, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg

    Julio Cesar dos Reis

  2. Laboratory for Computer Science (LRI), University of Paris-Sud XI, Bât. 650, PCRI, 91405, Orsay, France

    Julio Cesar dos Reis

  3. Faculty of Campo Limpo Paulista (FACCAMP), Rua Guatemala, 167, 13231-230, Campo Limpo Paulista, SP, Brazil

    Rodrigo Bonacin

  4. Center for Information Technology Renato Archer, Rod. Dom Pedro I, Km 143.6, Campinas, SP, Brazil

    Rodrigo Bonacin

  5. Department of Information Systems, Institute of Computing, University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Av. Albert Einstein, 1251, Cidade Universitária Zeferino Vaz, Campinas, SP, Brazil

    M. Cecília C. Baranauskas

Authors
  1. Julio Cesar dos Reis
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Rodrigo Bonacin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. M. Cecília C. Baranauskas
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Julio Cesar dos Reis.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

dos Reis, J.C., Bonacin, R. & Baranauskas, M.C.C. Addressing universal access in social networks: an inclusive search mechanism. Univ Access Inf Soc 13, 125–145 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-013-0290-7

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-013-0290-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation