The web is central to many human activities and infringes on many others: at home, and at work, including education and research. Links between web sites can be used in information science and social science research as a valuable source of evidence about online phenomena, and about online components of offline phenomena. Given a set of websites, the links between them many reveal interesting patterns of connectedness that could reflect issues of underlying human communication or information value. Link analysis is therefore a valuable tool for information science and social science researchers investigating the web, or other phenomena with an offline component. This book provides methods, guidelines and examples to guide researchers and students through a research project, in addition to reviewing a considerable body of previous work. It contains a complete link analysis methodology for information science and social science research. It features a strong online component which includes software and instructions to allow complete link analyses. The case studies include academic, business and commercial search engine applications. Practical chapters describe a range of related methods, software and data sources.

Link Analysis: An Information Science Approach (Library and Information Science, 4)

Politics & Social Sciences

Thelwall, Mike

Social Sciences

Emerald Publishing Limited

AI for Knowledge (AI for Everything)

AI for Knowledge explores the question of whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) will transform the nature of human knowledge over the next decade. AI is accelerating our access to knowledge through search, recommendation, summarisation, translation and a proliferating range of tools with AI built in. Generative AI is further changing how we use and create information at home and in the workplace. Yet AI also has a dark side with hallucination, bias and lack of explainability, as well as potential for harmful impacts on social equity and the environment. It investigates how AI will impact everyday knowledge discovery, understanding and creation. It considers both the positive benefits and the many informational and ethical challenges, including the impact on our wider information culture. It then weighs up the impact on scholarship, including the processes of scholarly communication. It explains the role of libraries and archives and how they could be enhanced using AI. It concludes by showing how governments can regulate AI to ensure social benefit and outlines what we as individuals need to know about AI. The book helps the reader see through some of the AI hype to understand much more clearly what are the issues around the impact of AI on knowledge access and creation, including the implications for environmental sustainability and the power of Big Tech. What emerges is a nuanced picture of potential benefit and risk, especially when we consider the experiences of those with less privileged access to the digital, particularly beyond those outside the Global North.

Computers & Technology

Cox, Andrew

Computer Science

CRC-Press

Researching Social Media

Vis, Farida

Sage Publications Ltd.

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