Mapping key social challenges associated with technology development using text-mining methods

As part of the Next Gene­ra­tion Inter­net For­ward pro­ject, Michał Paliń­skiand Kri­stóf Gyó­di have deve­lo­ped a new tool that faci­li­ta­tes the explo­ra­tion of key tech­no­lo­gi­cal chal­len­ges and rela­ted poli­cy issu­es. The star­ting point of the stu­dy was a the­sis abo­ut the move­ment of public deba­te par­ti­ci­pants within infor­ma­tion bub­bles on topics rela­ted to new tech­no­lo­gies and rela­ted social chal­len­ges. Con­fron­ting this pro­blem, the authors map­ped artic­les, blog notes, and other types of con­tent sha­red on social networks. The main focus was on topics such as ethi­cal arti­fi­cial intel­li­gen­ce, edu­ca­tion during a pan­de­mic, onli­ne pri­va­cy, and tech­no­lo­gi­cal aspects of com­ba­ting cli­ma­te change.

Based on text-mining metho­do­lo­gy, the authors rese­ar­ched and iden­ti­fied topics sha­red on social media plat­forms (they ana­ly­zed more than 110,000 artic­les on Twit­ter, Red­dit, and Hac­ker News). The inte­rac­ti­ve report resul­ting from the ana­ly­sis allows you to explo­re topics and artic­les on your own, based on your users» inte­re­sts. In the report, the authors outli­ned 6 topic are­as that they iden­ti­fied as key to the deve­lop­ment of new digi­tal tech­no­lo­gies. In the stu­dy, they were par­ti­cu­lar­ly inte­re­sted in the issu­es of inc­lu­si­vi­ty of new tech­no­lo­gies, the­ir ethi­ca­li­ty, and the­ir wide ava­ila­bi­li­ty to users. A sum­ma­ry of the ana­ly­sis of the­se are­as can be found in the case stu­dy titled: „Access, Inc­lu­sion and Justi­ce”. Within this topic area, they iden­ti­fied clu­sters of artic­les on such topics as the IT wage gap, ethi­cal pro­gram­ming, and regu­la­tions such as the EU Copy­ri­ght Direc­ti­ve and U.S. Sec­tion 230.

During the semi­nar Kri­stóf Gyó­di and Michal Paliń­ski will pre­sent the rese­arch metho­do­lo­gy and data scien­ce tools used to ena­ble effi­cient scra­ping of artic­les from web por­tals and blogs. They will also talk abo­ut the chal­len­ges of text clu­ste­ring and rese­ar­ching the popu­la­ri­ty of spe­ci­fic sour­ces of artic­les sha­red on social networks. The meeting is espe­cial­ly direc­ted to people inte­re­sted in new tech­no­lo­gies and the­ir regu­la­tion, media ana­ly­sis and wide­ly under­sto­od text mining.