An approach to study coordinated human behaviour through the lens of information sequence analysis.

What is it about?

In this paper we elaborate on the hypothesis that information sequence analysis provides a novel and unique way of looking at the behaviour of human collectives in Web-based information systems. We describe how our research expands on work about activity bursts and we outline that stochastic processes such as Hidden Markov Models are a suitable means to capture hidden patterns of coordination from information sequences that would not be visible otherwise.

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Why is it important?

It is an increasing concern that context-rich data analysis methods add or amplify biases that are inherent in the contextual data they consult (e.g. social networks exploited to rank content). This is particularly problematic in the areas of computer supported collaborative work (CSCW) and business information system (BIS) where we need an unbiased view to information. The approach described in this paper is one promising direction of research to provide such a view.