National University of Singapore

Social Computing

Social computing has emerged over the past years to describe the use of networked computing tools for facilitating interpersonal and organizational interactions. The objectives of our Social Computing Group, in the NUS Department of Information Systems, include the creation and study of systems that enhance individual, group and enterprise processes, networks and products. These information systems facilitate and enhance collaboration.
Our group activities encompass not only the study of the participants that is the hallmark of computer-mediated communication, or the process focus of computer-supported collaborative work, but also the development of new tools in increasingly networked and ubiquitous computing environments. We acknowledge the growing need for social components in a wider range of computing tools. Organizational issues, software design and interface design are vital to encourage development of social networks. Therefore, our multi-disciplinary group draws as much on the fields of communication, sociology, psychology, and even political science as it does on technology and computing.
The technology industry is keenly aware of the importance of this emerging field. For example, Microsoft Research, IBM Research, Intel Research and HP Research have all established Social Computing groups focusing on this important research area. Our group emphasizes on adoption, design and methods for harvesting the collective intelligence of people to realize greater value from the interaction between users and information. The key themes are:

• Social Networks and Social Commerce
• Social Structures and Community Modeling
• Enterprise Social Systems
• Virtual Teams and Distributed Collaboration
• Virtual Worlds and Mobile Networks
  
  

SOCIAL NETWORKS AND SOCIAL COMMERCE
Social network analysis views social relationships in terms of network theory consisting of nodes (e.g., individuals) and ties (e.g. relationships between individuals). The resulting graph-based structures are often very complex. One theme of our research focuses on social commerce, a subset of electronic commerce that involves using social media to support social interaction and user contributions, and to assist in the online buying and selling of products and services. We conduct theoretical and empirical studies to examine online collaborative shopping tools, recommendation agents, social applications, advertising, tagging and other user-generated content-sharing of online product information and referrals. These collaborative tools enable shoppers to get advice from trusted individuals, find goods and services, and then purchase them.

SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND COMMUNITY MODELING
Social structures are made up of individuals (or organizations) who are connected by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige. Such structures may operate on many levels, from families to global communities, and play a critical role in determining the way problems are solved, organizations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals. In recent years, online communities are growing fast on the Internet. They provide members with information and social support. While a minority such as Facebook and Wikipedia are successful, many others fail. Our research in this area focuses on empirical studies to examine behavior in online communities using theory-based guidelines. This involves modeling online and offline activities, general social structures of communities, information privacy and cross-cultural communication.

ENTERPRISE SOCIAL SYSTEMS
Enterprise social systems, a major component of Web 2.0, comprise of social software as used in business or commercial contexts. They include social and networked modifications to corporate intranets and other classic software platforms used by large companies to organize their communication. Specific social software tools used in the organizational context include wikis, blogs, search tools, social bookmarking, RSS, collaborative planning software, ideas banks, social networking tools, and mashups. Such capabilities often help organizations to capture unstructured tacit knowledge. The challenge then becomes how to distill meaningful, re-usable knowledge from the universe of unstructured content. Our research focuses on the use of enterprise social systems and social capital on knowledge exchange and knowledge integration. Our faculty and students are also creating and examining new information services that facilitate fluid content creation and consumption.

VIRTUAL TEAMS AND DISTRIBUTED COLLABORATION
Virtual teams, also known as geographically distributed teams, are groups of individuals who work across time, space, and organizational boundaries with communication strengthened by information technologies. The proliferation of social media has significantly increased the scope of off-site communication. Virtual teams require new ways of working across boundaries through systems, processes, technology, and people. Our research aims to understand collaboration in virtual teams and distributed work, including knowledge sharing, knowledge acquisition and contribution behaviors, organizational social networks, and conflict management.

VIRTUAL WORLDS AND MOBILE NETWORKS
A virtual world is a genre of online community that often takes the form of a computer-based simulated environment, through which users can interact with one another, and use and create objects. Virtual worlds are intended for its users to inhabit and interact, where they take the form of avatars visible to others graphically. These avatars are usually depicted as textual, two-dimensional, or three-dimensional graphical representations. Virtual worlds are not limited to games but, depending on the degree of immediacy presented, can encompass video conferencing and text based chatrooms. Our research focuses on social interaction, learning and loyalty in virtual worlds, as well as online gaming extended to mobile networks.

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