ACM Hypertext 2017

Kristina Lerman is Research Team Lead at the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute and holds a joint appointment as a Research Associate Professor in the USC Computer Science Department. Trained as a physicist, she now applies network- and machine learning-based methods to problems in social computing and social media analysis.

A meme is not a virus: the role of cognitive heuristics in information diffusion

The many decisions people make about what information to consume affect emerging trends, their popularity, and the diffusion of information through online social networks. Due to constraints of available time and cognitive resources, the ease of discovery strongly affects how people allocate their attention. Through empirical analysis and online experiments, I measure the impact of cognitive biases on collective attention. I show that position of information in the user interface strongly determines whether it is seen, while explicit signals about its popularity increases the likelihood of response. Accounting for these factors simplifies dynamics of information diffusion, allows for more accurate prediction of social behavior, and explains why most memes fail to spread widely online.

Peter Mika

Peter Mika is a Senior Director of Engineering at Schibsted, working on user profiling, personalised search and recommendations for marketplace and media sites across 30 markets around the world. Previously, he was Director of Research at Yahoo Labs, based in London, UK, where he was working on the applications of semantic technology to Web search. He received his MSc and PhD in computer science (summa cum laude) from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is the author of numerous publications, as well as the book 'Social Networks and the Semantic Web' (Springer, 2007). In 2008 he has been selected as one of "AI's Ten to Watch" by the editorial board of the IEEE Intelligent Systems journal. In 2015, he received a 10 year best paper award for “Ontologies are us: A unified model of social networks and semantics”, originally published at ISWC 2005. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Web Semantics (Elsevier). Peter is a regular speaker at both academic and technology conferences and serves on the advisory board of a number of public and private initiatives.

What happened to the Semantic Web?

The idea of the Semantic Web has surfaced in the literature over 20 years ago, and this area has been a major focus of academic research and standardisation for almost as long. In this talk, we look back at the history of the Semantic Web. We discuss what the original aspirations of its creators were, and what has been achieved in practice in these two decades. We also seek to find where the Semantic Web has failed and succeeded, illustrated by usage in web search, e-commerce and online media. Further, we will attempt to understand whether it makes sense to pursue at least some of these ideas in a different age, with new opportunities brought about by recent developments in Big Data, cloud computing, and Deep Learning.

Festival Of Narrative Automata

Critical Theory For Fun

Hypertext research has been deeply interested a narrative, and literary hypertext fiction has enjoyed a long and happy relationship to this conference. The literature of Critical Theory, on the other hand, is famously opaque, and our Balkanized technical literature on new media storytelling has grown provincial.

Daring yet accessible experiments in nonsequential interactive narrative have appeared in unexpected places – in theaters, in experimental novels, and especially in narrativist role-playing games. These /narrative automata/ exhibit considerable sophistication in the frame of simple models of computation. Much of this work is a lot of fun while demonstrating remarkable theoretical depth. In contrast to the cheery hero journeys through depopulated landscapes that long dominated computer games, this work is notably dark, emotionally complex, and introspective.

Mark Bernstein is chief scientist at Eastgate Systems, publishers of serious hypertext. He has attended most of the hypertext conferences since 1987, wrote papers ranging from “Patterns of Hypertext” to “Can We Talk About Spatial Hypertext?” and served twice as program chair. He is the designer of Tinderbox, a hypertext tool for notes. He recently completed /Getting Started with Hypertext Narrative,/ an introductory textbook for Storyspace 3, and the dark hypertext novel /Those Trojan Girls./

Immersion in e-Learning

Flow is a state of intense concentration and engagement, when a user is so immersed in her activity, that all other external influences cease. It is a well-known fact that flow is experienced in games, where we all had the 'just one more minute' request from our children. This tutorial looks at applying the notion of flow to online learning environments, which are currently less successful in gathering children attention: where we're coming from, and how far we got. The talk extracts the steps of the journey: starting from Adaptive Hypermedia, moving on to e-Learning 2.0 (or social e-learning), via visualisation techniques, and more recently, gamification and learner analytics. It discusses how these steps have contributed to the immersion feeling in learners, and what the future holds for achieving this goal. Hands-on experience with tools aiming at immersion in e-learning will be available during and after the talk. A round-table discussion with all participants will finish the talk.

Dr. Cristea is Associate Professor (Reader) at Warwick University, Coordinator of the Intelligent and Adaptive Systems group. Her research encompasses UM, personalisation, semantic - and social web, authoring (over 250 papers; over 3000 GS citations). Her work on frameworks for adaptive systems and pioneering work on adaptation languages are highly cited. A top 50 researcher in the world in educational computer-based research (Microsoft Research), she gave invited talks in many countries.

Oral Presentations (Long and Short papers)

• Papers with long presentation will be given a slot with 25 minutes for presentation + 5 minutes for questions.
• Papers with short presentation will be given a slot with 15 minutes for presentation + 5 minutes for questions.

Demonstrations track

• Demonstrations will be presented during the welcome reception (Wednesday July 5th, 17:40+).
• Organizers will prepare a power supply, WiFi connection, desk, chairs and a poster stand (A0) for each presenter.
• Presenters should bring a laptop with presentation or system demonstration and we also recommend to bring a poster to draw more attention to your work.