Thematic Network Modelling for Digital Ecosystems

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The contect of the researchThe shift from traditional communication methods towards digital ones brings about massive information dissemination with little to no regulation, making difgital ecosystems and increasingly timely interdisciplinary topic in recent years. Digital ecosystems can include, for example social media platforms and digital markets. Understanding such systems and proposign appropriate policies have therefore become more and more prominent recently. Current computational techniques rarely pay attention to the inherent role each individual/organisation/company's behaviour plays in the ecology from a system-level perspective, such as information creator, propagandist and listener in the online social media, or crucial/peripheral rank each stakeholder posesesses in a digital market. This project therefore would like to build on such traits, especially in the context of multi-sided groups.The aims and objectives of the researchThis project aims at dveloping computational analysis, simulation and intervention of interaction dynamics in digital ecosystems, seeking to answer the following key problems;1. How to assess the inherant role each individual/organisation. complay plays in a system-levale interpretable way.2. Can we make meaningful comparison between milti-sided groups via thier role sturctures and behavioral simiulation.3. To improv the digital ecosystem, what intervention approaches can be proposed based on the analysis above? This will likely make use to the reommendation algorithm.4. What are the scalability limitations of the method above, and can we mitigate them to enable analysis on increasing data sizes (e.g across large population samples or different geographies)?The novelty of the research methodologyThe main novelty in this research is the application of network structure techniques to assess system-level collective behavioral features in digital ecosystems and propose relevant intervention approaches accordingly, particularly relevant with recmmendation algorithms.The potential impact, applications and benefitsIntroducing complex network structures to digital ecosystems can provide an intuitive system-level evaluation of extensive user interaction dynamics. Appropriate intervention methods may be explored to potentially improve digital regilation and policy.How the rsearch relates to the remitThis research is closely related with the EPSRC remit in both its methodology and goal. Complex network modelling as the primary methodology strongly relies on mathematical sciences. The goal is to improve the digital ecosystem, lying in both Digital Economy and ICT (Inofrmation and Communication Technologies).External Partner - StateUP (https://stateup.co/nebula/) - StateUp is a start up company which stands at the crossroads of industry and academia, working on procurement technologies for the publc sector. It will provide me with both internship opportunities and datasets. In details, I can help build Nebula, a repository curated by stateUp that can be used to make recommendations to public bodies seeeking to resolve societal problems at various scales. During this process, I will also have exclusive access to acurated dataser of company profiles.