Skip to main content

SoBigData Articles

Successful 1st International SoBigData Workshop - in conjunction with TPDL 2016

On September 5th, 2016 the 1st International SoBigData Workshop took place in Hannover in conjunction with the TPDL 2016. The attractive program attracted around 65 researchers and practitioners from researchers, policy makers, data provider, data scientists, etc. from all over Europe to get insights societal challenges and discuss potential big data solutions as they are currently developed in SoBigData.

The workshop was opened by Fosca Giannotti (ISTI-CNR), coordinator of the SoBigData research infrastructure project. She gave an overview about the goals and current status.

During the “Big Data for Migration Studies” session Simone Bertoli of the University of Clermont-Ferrand discussed the main sources of information for international migration flows and how social network data could improve this situation. Afterwards Claudio Lucchese presented a study on the Perception of the Mediterranean Refugees Crisis by using Sentiment-enhanced Multidimensional Analysis of Online Social Networks.

The aspect of “Societal Well-being & Economic Performance” has been addressed from different directions. Filomena Magginoof the University of Florence presented definition and indicators for measuring fair and sustainable wellbeing. The Eefect of gender-based segregation in company boards to well-being was the topic of Pepe Küngas (Uni. of Tartu) presentation. Finally Giles Greenway presented the MobileMiner and NervousNet collaboration of the Kings College London and the ETH Zürich.

Within the “Monitoring Topics across Time and Space” session Jochen Spangenberg of Deutsche Welle gave insights in how user generated content is used in the journalistic work. Monitoring and understanding of debates in social media were the topics of two presentations by Dominic Rout (Uni. of Sheffield) and Gerhard Gossen (L3S & Uni Hannover). Alina Sarbu (Uni. of Pisa) finally presented a method on understanding the dynamics of opinions.

The workshop concluded with a presentation and discussion on the ethical aspects by Jeroen van den Hoven (TU Delft). Furthermore Fosca Giannotti Valerio Grossi gave an outlook on the future development of the SoBigData research infrastructure.