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In this extended abstract we present our approach to marshal digital tools in the fight against malaria. We describe our scalable infrastructure which leverages abstractions to support effective deployment of existing computational models and their associated data.
E-Scooters are changing transportation habits. In an attempt to oversee scooter usage, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation has put forth a specification that requests detailed data on scooter usage from scooter companies. In this work, we first argue that L.A.s data request for using a new specification is not warranted as proposed use cases can be met by already existing specifications. Second, we show that even the existing specification, that requires companies to publish real-time data of parked scooters, puts the privacy of individuals using the scooters at risk. We then propose an algorithm that enables formal privacy and utility guarantees when publishing parked scooters data, allowing city authorities to meet their use cases while preserving riders privacy.
This article reports from an ongoing evaluation for improvement action research and participatory design project in Rwanda, where the aim is to improve data use practices and the capabilities of the District Health Information Software 2 (DHIS2), an open source health information management platform, to support data use. The study of data use at health facility and district level showed that while data was used routinely at, for example, monthly coordination meetings, the DHIS2 dashboards and other analytical tools were in limited use because users preferred to use Microsoft Excel for data analysis and use. Given such findings, a major focus of the project has been directed towards identifying shortcomings in data use practices and in the software platform and to suggest, design and eventually implement changes. While the practical work on implementing improvements have been slow due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the suggested design improvements involve many levels of system design and participation, from the global core DHIS2 software team, the country DHIS2 team and local app development, the Rwanda Ministry of Health, and health workers at local level.
Digital Engineering, the digital transformation of engineering to leverage digital technologies, is coming globally. This paper explores digital systems engineering, which aims at developing theory, methods, models, and tools to support the emerging digital engineering. A critical task is to digitalize engineering artifacts, thus enabling information sharing across platform, across life cycle, and across domains. We identify significant challenges and enabling digital technologies; analyze the transition from traditional engineering to digital engineering; define core concepts, including digitalization, unique identification, digitalized artifacts, digital augmentation, and others; present a big picture of digital systems engineering in four levels: vision, strategy, action, and foundation; briefly discuss each of main areas of research issues. Digitalization enables fast infusing and leveraging novel digital technologies; unique identification enables information traceability and accountability in engineering lifecycle; provenance enables tracing dependency relations among engineering artifacts; supporting model reproducibility and replicability; helping with trustworthiness evaluation of digital engineering artifacts.
Despite the influence that image-based communication has on online discourse, the role played by images in disinformation is still not well understood. In this paper, we present the first large-scale study of fauxtography, analyzing the use of manipulated or misleading images in news discussion on online communities. First, we develop a computational pipeline geared to detect fauxtography, and identify over 61k instances of fauxtography discussed on Twitter, 4chan, and Reddit. Then, we study how posting fauxtography affects engagement of posts on social media, finding that posts containing it receive more interactions in the form of re-shares, likes, and comments. Finally, we show that fauxtography images are often turned into memes by Web communities. Our findings show that effective mitigation against disinformation need to take images into account, and highlight a number of challenges in dealing with image-based disinformation.
We examine the temporal evolution of digital communication activity relating to the American anti-capitalist movement Occupy Wall Street. Using a high-volume sample from the microblogging site Twitter, we investigate changes in Occupy participant engagement, interests, and social connectivity over a fifteen month period starting three months prior to the movements first protest action. The results of this analysis indicate that, on Twitter, the Occupy movement tended to elicit participation from a set of highly interconnected users with pre-existing interests in domestic politics and foreign social movements. These users, while highly vocal in the months immediately following the birth of the movement, appear to have lost interest in Occupy related communication over the remainder of the study period.