Notes on RDF/Linked data

A few clarifying points for and against linked data / RDF from a couple of interesting resources.

Big Data journal published an article What Do RDF and SPARQL bring to Big Data Projects?. The article provides a concise yet very clear overview of RDF - a standard to represent structured and semi-structured data, based on triples and globally unique IDs. Unique IDs look like URLs, but their job is naming (i.e., unambiguous naming), not providing locations. They look like URLs, because this allows domain owners to control the naming conventions.

Benefits of RDF over relational databases:

• independence from schemas (new classes, properties and relationships can be added easily without the need to modify a schema in advance);
• easy integration and disintegration of datasets; 
• shared vocabularies; 
• efficiency in storing datasets that don't have all the same properties for every instance in a class (similar to NoSQL databases). 

The difference of RDF from other noSQL options is that it comes with a query language standard, SPARQL, which allows you to find the connections between triples in aggregated data. SPARQL can be used to query both RDF and non-RDF data. D2RQ platform, for example, can execute a single SPARQL query across databases stored in different relational database management systems.

The overall conclusion of the article is that RDF offers a more flexible solution for big data, the solution that is based on open standards and therefore is interoperable and expandable.

Another resource, a presentation "RDF: Resource Description Failures and Linked Data Letdowns" by Robert Sanderson (YouTube link and Vimeo link and I wish these great presentations existed in some textual form - it's really hard to work with videos) argues that Semantic Web was a great idea in 2003 and still is a great idea in 2013, but it has serious difficulties and complications to overcome:

• RDF complicates querying and limits it. Both structure and data are important for queries, but in RDF data is treated as a "second class" citizen, because structure is a new thing and more interesting. So full text search, for example, is difficult. You need to know the structure (triple elements) to query RDF. And that's usually a problem for systems with a developed front end - you can't expect users to know the structure. 
• Serialization and storage become complicated. RDF graphs have no beginning and end and can be cyclic, but you want to store information without repeating it. Triplestore (RDF storage solution) is a one big lump that has not clear documents or objects. If different users put documents in, they might want to treat their contributions as separate.
• RDF visualization is hard (as opposed to document visualization), because it focuses on structure. But what about data? Hard to see what's going on, labeling and connections are terrible.
• RDF/Semantic Web is based on the ultimate goal of creating a single global graph. This "Open World" idea is good in theory as it provides richness of data, its re-use, gradual expansion, etc. But global graphs create several problems, e.g., how to deal with local complexity (when statements are true in one context and not true in another). Local identities are also similarly complex.
• Linked data do not address well changes over time - a lot of work need to be done.

Good things about RDF: open source, scalable, cross-platform, in use by commercial companies, good for inferences and new knowledge, interfaces are fast developing.

Habermas, Bakhtin and Wikipedia

A nice scholarly work, which, unfortunately, suffered from the constraints of the research article genre: Cimini, N., & Burr, J. (2012). An aesthetic for deliberating online: Thinking through “universal pragmatics” and “dialogism” with reference to Wikipedia. The Information Society, 28(3), 151-160. Routledge. doi: 10.1080/01972243.2012.669448. If the authors were allowed to write in an essay style, they could have elaborated on their own insights rather than trying to objectify their analysis and fit it into categories of empirical research.

The paper begins with an observation that Habermasian theory of "universal pragmatics" is often used to support the claims that the Internent with its forums, chats, and other forms of massive distributed communication has a potential to become a vehicle for deliberative democracy based on the principles of openness, accountability, and rationality. Habermas wrote a lot about rational deliberations and its potential to facilitate justice and democracy. He was criticized a lot for being idealistic and for implying that everybody can be articulate, rational and willing to participate (the homogenization of discourse communities). To go beyond such normative homogenizing theorizing the authors suggest to use the Bakhtinian notions of "dialogism" and "carnival". They look at two cases on Wikipedia: stem cells and transhumanism in an attempt to demonstrate how by using both Habermasian and Bakhtinian approaches we can combine the normative and the empirical and figure out what kind of interventions are needed to bring social change.

Bakhtin was concerned with power and how it is reproduced within the language. Similarly to Foucault, he also sought to explain how power relations can be subverted through language. Bakhtin used the novels of Dostoevsky to show that the characters in those novels interacted in a dialogue in which each voice had an equal right. This, according to Bakhtin, was a form of continuous dialogism that could facilitate re-definitions of the world. Bakthin also introduced the term “carnivalesque” to describe how the carnival situation relied on laughter and grotesque to promote change and “the merry negation of uniformity and similarity”. Carnivalesque literature (Rabelais' "Gargantua and Pantagruel"), like carnivals themselves, suspended hierarchic distinctions and allowed for reconsideration of notions of usual life.

The Wikipedia articles on stem cells and transhumanism had a lot of ad hominem argumentation, claims to authority and other elements of irrational discourse. However, the authors show that such irrational argumentation actually helped to reach consensus:

Again, the delicate consensus that was achieved among these various editors was brought about through a clash of opposing points of view, rather than through reasoned or rational discussion. As was the case with the display of userboxes and in the debates over stem cells, discussed earlier, this exchange on genetic engineering further undermines the idea that Wikipedia approximates rational discourse. We can see both the purchase of grotesque language in political deliberation (a crapshoot), forcing a response from Loremaster, and in that response yet more attempts to construct personal authority through unverifiable accounts of “best knowledge.” In the end, however, this was not an obstacle to communicative reason. Instead, these seemingly irrational methods of argumentation facilitated further discussion and eventually agreement, inclining Loremaster to reconsider his views and later provide evidence in support of his claims...

Basically, the paper invites us to reconsider the idea that rational discourse is the only way to achieve meaningful consensus. The authors suggest paying more attention to "the emancipatory potential of seemingly irrational methods of persuasion" (section "Conclusion", para 1). It's a powerful idea that needs elaboration (which was not done here). I wasn't convinced that Bakhtinian ideas were helpful here, but again I don't think the authors had a chance to work on it properly. What I would be interested in exploring is whether having a goal (e.g., a stable entry in Wikipedia) improves chances of consensus and whether online communication (as opposed to f2f) mitigates conflict. It'd also be nice to see clearly outlined suggestions for interventions mentioned at the beginning of the paper.

Typology of public engagement

Here is my attempt to visualize a paper rather than type up notes:
Rowe, G., & Frewer, L. J. (2005). A typology of public engagement mechanisms. Science, Technology & Human Values, 30(2), 251-290. doi: 10.1177/0162243904271724.

L.A. Lievrouw: New media, mediation, and communication study

A nice review of concepts and theories in communication studies: Lievrouw, L. A. (2009). New media, mediation, and communication study. Information, Communication & Society, 12(3), 303.

The article identifies three conceptual moments that define the development of communication studies: theories of media effect that focused on mass communication, concepts of "new media" and mediation, and cultural studies of the uses of ICTs. The trajectory in the development of communication studies is towards convergence.The first conceptual moment is characterized by the focus on media effects and impacts.

Lazarsfeld and Katz proposed the two-step flow process of "media to conversation to opinion" as a critical response to linear models of communication that defined communication as transmission (sender-message-channel-receiver). This opened the way for other mass communication theories that viewed audiences and media as enmeshed in complex interpersonal relations.
Subsequent research followed two directions corresponding to main "intervening variables" involved in two-step flow: decision studies (opinion formation, voting decisions, etc) and diffusion studies.

In decision studies there uses and gratifications theory, expectancy value theory, dependency theory, and reader-response theory. Uses and gratifications theory argues that users make rational choices among media and messages according to their personal needs and interests. Refinements such as expectancy-value theory and dependency theory addressed the overemphasis on audience's rationality and goal-directedness. Reader-response theory is used to study audience reception to media.

Diffusion studies use diffusion of innovations theory (the communication and adoption of new practices through social systems). Diffusion framework focuses on how people share information, adopt technologies and products, etc. It has been criticized for technological determinism and for the tendency to view innovations positively, thus to privilege the interests of their promoters.

The second moment focused on the attempts to incorporate new media in communication studies. One approach was to adapt existing communication theories to the study of new systems. Another - to draw on a mix of methods and concepts from other disciplines.

From science and technology studies the following was adopted: the concept of the mutual-shaping of society and technology as well as ethnographic and ethnomethodological approaches. Computer-mediated communication framework is another strategy that allowed to study interpersonal interactions via computer-based networks. Some analysts began to reconsider the assumptions that f2f interaction is the richest form of interaction and that the introduction of technology degrades the quality. One conceptual move was to frame interaction in terms of 'presence', i.e., the variety and perceived quality of communication afforded by media. Other theories and concepts: media richness theory, social context cues, interactivity (the extent to which media and information technologies foster a sense of reciprocity, mutuality, feedback, etc.)

The third moment reflects the cultural turn to humanistic approaches from cultural/critical studies. Media are viewed as instruments in the reproduction and transmission of dominant ideologies, interests, and power structures. The drawback is that the cultural-transmission approach views new forms of technologies as new mass media, which may ignore their interactive and participatory features. This view began to shift over the last decade. The concept of connected presence describes non-mass flows of information via mobile phones, email, SMS, and chat. Domestication theory (people consume and appropriate new media, which influences subsequent technology development) is a response to the ideas of mutual shaping. Mediation is the concept that can help to bring together multiple strands of communication studies and bridge the gap between studies of mass media and studies of interpersonal communication.

To conclude, the article argues that "any satisfactory theory of communication today must account for its dual social and technical nature, and for the experience of communication as a seamless and continually negotiated web of meaning, practices, tools, resources, and relations. ... we should keep in mind the multilayered meanings of the word mediation itself - both the technological means or forms of expression, and the interpersonal processes of moderation, negotiation, and intervention." (p. 317).