The social dimension of information ranking: A discussion of research challenges and approaches

Abstract

The extraction of relevant knowledge from the increasingly large amount of information available in information repositories is one of the big challenges of our time. Although it is clear that the social and the information layer of collaborative knowledge spaces like the World Wide Web (WWW), scholarly publication databases or Online Social Networks (OSNs) are inherently coupled and thus inseparable, the question how the ranking and retrieval of information is influenced by the structure and dynamics of the social systems that create it has been addressed at most partially. In this talk, we will highlight associated research questions and challenges from an ethical, social and computer science perspective and introduce a multiplex network perspective that integrates both the social and the semantic layer of social information systems.