scholarly journals Research Crowdfunding and Scholarly Communication: A Case Study of Three Campaigns

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darren Chase ◽  
Dana Haugh ◽  
Victoria Pilato

Crowdfunding leverages the opportunities of online social networks to share ideas and connect individuals by seeking small donations from a large number of supporters in order to complete a project or develop a product. Research crowdfunding is emerging as a dynamic alternative or supplement to grant-funded research, particularly for low-cost research, researchers at institutions without strong traditions of grants-funded research, and high-risk or unconventional research with few or no sponsors. For some researchers, crowdfunding enables new and novel collaborations between researchers, entrepreneurs, artists, social and environmental activists, as well as facilitating unexpected uses and expressions of research.Through the lens of three qualitative crowdfunding campaign studies this article explores how crowdfunding conventions and platforms influence and impact the way research is used, communicated, shared, and in some cases performed. Successful crowdfunding relies on engagement and audience support -- higher levels of support include exclusive affordances, including opportunities to participate in events, acknowledgement in publications, and access to the researchers via online or in-person meetings. Crowdfunding platforms offer researchers the framework to appeal for support and communicate the details and progress of their research in a personal, narrative style, often utilizing video and social networks. This article will examine the new opportunities for communicating, sharing, and using research that crowdfunding facilitates through a case study of three crowdfunding campaigns.

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 100136
Author(s):  
Martino Trevisan ◽  
Luca Vassio ◽  
Danilo Giordano

2006 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-38
Author(s):  
Kurt Rhyner

Disasters are always caused by a combination of factors, and the natural phenomenon that brings them on is usually just a catalyst. The underlying cause of most disasters is poverty as mostly the poor segments of the population usually live in high risk areas where their shelter all too often cannot withstand even light winds, small inundations or medium earthquakes. When Hurricane Mitch hit Central America in October 1998, all countries were ill prepared. A few weeks earlier, the authorities of the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, had attempted to simulate an evacuation, but it had met with a great degree of resistance from the public. When Mitch hit, unprecedented masses of water raced down the mountainous river beds. People were taken by surprise, as no efficient organisation existed. Everybody ran for their lives. Houses slid down hillsides, rivers swept bridges, houses and people with them. Six years later, Tegucigalpa looks very similar to the days before Mitch. The steep hillsides are covered with a potpourri of dwellings, from miserable huts to solid upmarket houses. Regulations were passed in the year 2002 to prohibit construction in high risk areas; however, enforcement is difficult, especially when existing buildings are renovated and even enlarged. Theoretically it is possible to evacuate high risk areas. Nonetheless, such drastic measures are virtually impossible to implement, as no mayor or police chief would survive such an action in office. The paper presents a case study which shows that the underlying problems of poverty and the non-availability of suitable land for people to relocate from high risk areas can usually not be overcome by post-disaster reconstruction programmes. A mitigation strategy is thus to empower inhabitants of high risk areas to improve their own situation by affordable access to information, advice and suitable low cost construction materials through “Building Advisory Services” and Ecomaterials producers within the neighbourhoods.


2015 ◽  
pp. 1539-1556
Author(s):  
Dhiraj Murthy ◽  
Alexander Gross ◽  
Alex Takata

This chapter identifies a number of the most common data mining toolkits and evaluates their utility in the extraction of data from heterogeneous online social networks. It introduces not only the complexities of scraping data from the diverse forms of data manifested in these sources, but also critically evaluates currently available tools. This analysis is followed by a presentation and discussion on the development of a hybrid system, which builds upon the work of the open-source Web-Harvest framework, for the collection of information from online social networks. This tool, VoyeurServer, attempts to address the weaknesses of tools identified in earlier sections, as well as prototype the implementation of key functionalities thought to be missing from commonly available data extraction toolkits. The authors conclude the chapter with a case study and subsequent evaluation of the VoyeurServer system itself. This evaluation presents future directions, remaining challenges, and additional extensions thought to be important to the effective development of data mining tools for the study of online social networks.


2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (12) ◽  
pp. 2276-2281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Pinto ◽  
Ingrhid Theodoro ◽  
Marcos Arrais ◽  
Jonice Oliveira

Author(s):  
Cameron Taylor ◽  
Alexander V. Mantzaris ◽  
Ivan Garibay

Polarization in online social networks has gathered a significant amount of attention in the research community and in the public sphere due to stark disagreements with millions of participants in topics surrounding politics, climate, the economy and other areas where an agreement is required. There are multiple approaches to investigating the scenarios in which polarization occurs and given that polarization is not a new phenomenon but that its virality may be supported by the low cost and latency messaging offered by online social media platforms; an investigation into the intrinsic dynamics of online opinion evolution is presented for complete networks. Extending a model which utilizes the Binary Voter Model (BVM) to examine the effect of the degree of freedom for selecting contacts based upon homophily, simulations show that different opinions are reinforced for a period of time when users have a greater range of choice for association. The facility of discussion threads and groups formed upon common views further delays the rate in which a consensus can form between all members of the network. This can temporarily incubate members from interacting with those who can present an alternative opinion where a voter model would then proceed to produce a homogeneous opinion based upon pairwise interactions.


2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Raquel Recuero

Resumo Redes sociais online são grupos de atores que se constituem através da interação mediada pelo computador. Essas interações são capazes de estabelecer novas formas sociais de grupos e comunidades. Através da discussão de diversos conceitos de comunidade e comunidade virtual, propõe-se o estudo das comunidades virtuais como uma forma de rede social. Esse debate teórico é discutido então no campo de estudo constituído pelo Fotolog, durante os anos de 2005 e 2006. O fotolog é um sistema que permite aos usuários a publicação de fotografias, textos e comentários. Dos dados coletados através de formas qualitativas e quantitativas, propomos uma tipologia para as comunidades virtuais baseada em sua estrutura (a rede em si) e sua composição (tipos de laços sociais e capital social). Esses tipos são definidos como comunidades virtuais emergentes, comunidades virtuais de associação e comunidades virtuais híbridas.Palavras-chave redes sociais, comunidades virtuais, fotolog.Abstract Online social networks are groups of actors formed by computer-mediated social interaction. These interactions are capable of establishing new social forms of groups and communities. Based on a discussion over several concepts of community and virtual community we propose the virtual community as a specific form of online social network. This theoretical debate is brought to the field studying the system named Fotolog during 2005 and 2006. Fotolog (www.fotolog.com) is a web service that allows for its users to post photographs or images with an associated text and other users may comment on each other’s posts. From the collected data, we propose a typology for communities found in these networks, based on their structure (network) and composition (social ties and social capital). We define three types of communities as associative virtual communities, emergent virtual communities and hybrid virtual communities.Keywords social networks, virtual communities, fotolog. 


Author(s):  
Chang Yao ◽  
Yuanxing Zhang ◽  
Xiaomei Zhang ◽  
Kaigui Bian ◽  
Lingyang Song

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