@inbook {850, title = {Experimental Assessment of the Emergence of Awareness and Its Influence on Behavioral Changes: The Everyaware Lesson}, booktitle = {Participatory Sensing, Opinions and Collective Awareness}, year = {2017}, pages = {337{\textendash}362}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, abstract = {The emergence of awareness is deeply connected to the process of learning. In fact, by learning that high sound levels may harm one{\textquoteright}s health, that noise levels that we estimate as innocuous may be dangerous, that there exist an alternative path we can walk to go to work and minimize our exposure to air pollution, etc., citizens will be able to understand the environment around them and act consequently to go toward a more sustainable world.}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-25658-0_16}, url = {http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-25658-0_16}, author = {Pietro Gravino and Alina Sirbu and Becker, Martin and Vito D P Servedio and Vittorio Loreto} } @inbook {851, title = {Large Scale Engagement Through Web-Gaming and Social Computations}, booktitle = {Participatory Sensing, Opinions and Collective Awareness}, year = {2017}, pages = {237{\textendash}254}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, abstract = {In the last few years the Web has progressively acquired the status of an infrastructure for social computation that allows researchers to coordinate the cognitive abilities of human agents, so to steer the collective user activity towards predefined goals. This general trend is also triggering the adoption of web-games as an alternative laboratory to run experiments in the social sciences and whenever the contribution of human beings can be effectively used for research purposes. Web-games introduce a playful aspect in scientific experiments with the result of increasing participation of people and of keeping their attention steady in time. The aim of this chapter is to suggest a general purpose web-based platform scheme for web-gaming and social computation. This platform will simplify the realization of web-games and will act as a repository of different scientific experiments, thus realizing a sort of showcase that stimulates users{\textquoteright} curiosity and helps researchers in recruiting volunteers. A platform built by following these criteria has been developed within the EveryAware project, the Experimental Tribe (XTribe) platform, which is operational and ready to be used. Finally, a sample web-game hosted by the XTribe platform will be presented with the aim of reporting the results, in terms of participation and motivation, of two different player recruiting strategies.}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-25658-0_12}, url = {http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-25658-0_12}, author = {Vito D P Servedio and Saverio Caminiti and Pietro Gravino and Vittorio Loreto and Alina Sirbu and Francesca Tria} } @inbook {849, title = {Opinion dynamics: models, extensions and external effects}, booktitle = {Participatory Sensing, Opinions and Collective Awareness}, year = {2017}, pages = {363{\textendash}401}, publisher = {Springer}, organization = {Springer}, abstract = {Recently, social phenomena have received a lot of attention not only from social scientists, but also from physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists, in the emerging interdisciplinary field of complex system science. Opinion dynamics is one of the processes studied, since opinions are the drivers of human behaviour, and play a crucial role in many global challenges that our complex world and societies are facing: global financial crises, global pandemics, growth of cities, urbanisation and migration patterns, and last but not least important, climate change and environmental sustainability and protection. Opinion formation is a complex process affected by the interplay of different elements, including the individual predisposition, the influence of positive and negative peer interaction (social networks playing a crucial role in this respect), the information each individual is exposed to, and many others. Several models inspired from those in use in physics have been developed to encompass many of these elements, and to allow for the identification of the mechanisms involved in the opinion formation process and the understanding of their role, with the practical aim of simulating opinion formation and spreading under various conditions. These modelling schemes range from binary simple models such as the voter model, to multi-dimensional continuous approaches. Here, we provide a review of recent methods, focusing on models employing both peer interaction and external information, and emphasising the role that less studied mechanisms, such as disagreement, has in driving the opinion dynamics. Due to the important role that external information (mainly in the form of mass media broadcast) can have in enhancing awareness of social issues, a special emphasis will be devoted to study different forms it can take, investigating their effectiveness in driving the opinion formation at the population level. The review shows that, although a large number of approaches exist, some mechanisms such as the effect of multiple external information sources could largely benefit from further studies. Additionally, model validation with real data, which are starting to become available, is still largely lacking and should in our opinion be the main ambition of future investigations.}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-25658-0_17}, url = {http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-25658-0_17}, author = {Alina Sirbu and Vittorio Loreto and Vito D P Servedio and Francesca Tria} } @conference {857, title = {Unveiling Political Opinion Structures with a Web-experiment}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Complex Information Systems}, year = {2016}, abstract = {The dynamics of political votes has been widely studied, both for its practical interest and as a paradigm of the dynamics of mass opinions and collective phenomena, where theoretical predictions can be easily tested. However, the vote outcome is often influenced by many factors beyond the bare opinion on the candidate, and in most cases it is bound to a single preference. The voter perception of the political space is still to be elucidated. We here propose a web experiment (laPENSOcos{\textquoteleft}{\i}) where we explicitly investigate participants{\textquoteright} opinions on political entities (parties, coalitions, individual candidates) of the Italian political scene. As a main result, we show that the political perception follows a Weber-Fechner-like law, i.e., when ranking political entities according to the user expressed preferences, the perceived distance of the user from a given entity scales as the logarithm of this rank.}, isbn = {978-989-758-181-6}, doi = {10.5220/0005906300390047}, url = {http://www.scitepress.org/DigitalLibrary/Link.aspx?doi=10.5220/0005906300390047}, author = {Pietro Gravino and Saverio Caminiti and Alina Sirbu and Francesca Tria and Vito D P Servedio and Vittorio Loreto} } @article {794, title = {Participatory Patterns in an International Air Quality Monitoring Initiative.}, journal = {PLoS One}, volume = {10}, year = {2015}, month = {2015}, pages = {e0136763}, abstract = {

The issue of sustainability is at the top of the political and societal agenda, being considered of extreme importance and urgency. Human individual action impacts the environment both locally (e.g., local air/water quality, noise disturbance) and globally (e.g., climate change, resource use). Urban environments represent a crucial example, with an increasing realization that the most effective way of producing a change is involving the citizens themselves in monitoring campaigns (a citizen science bottom-up approach). This is possible by developing novel technologies and IT infrastructures enabling large citizen participation. Here, in the wider framework of one of the first such projects, we show results from an international competition where citizens were involved in mobile air pollution monitoring using low cost sensing devices, combined with a web-based game to monitor perceived levels of pollution. Measures of shift in perceptions over the course of the campaign are provided, together with insights into participatory patterns emerging from this study. Interesting effects related to inertia and to direct involvement in measurement activities rather than indirect information exposure are also highlighted, indicating that direct involvement can enhance learning and environmental awareness. In the future, this could result in better adoption of policies towards decreasing pollution.

}, issn = {1932-6203}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0136763}, author = {Alina Sirbu and Becker, Martin and Saverio Caminiti and De Baets, Bernard and Elen, Bart and Francis, Louise and Pietro Gravino and Hotho, Andreas and Ingarra, Stefano and Vittorio Loreto and Molino, Andrea and Mueller, Juergen and Peters, Jan and Ricchiuti, Ferdinando and Saracino, Fabio and Vito D P Servedio and Stumme, Gerd and Theunis, Jan and Francesca Tria and Van den Bossche, Joris} } @article {795, title = {Awareness and learning in participatory noise sensing.}, journal = {PLoS One}, volume = {8}, year = {2013}, month = {2013}, pages = {e81638}, abstract = {

The development of ICT infrastructures has facilitated the emergence of new paradigms for looking at society and the environment over the last few years. Participatory environmental sensing, i.e. directly involving citizens in environmental monitoring, is one example, which is hoped to encourage learning and enhance awareness of environmental issues. In this paper, an analysis of the behaviour of individuals involved in noise sensing is presented. Citizens have been involved in noise measuring activities through the WideNoise smartphone application. This application has been designed to record both objective (noise samples) and subjective (opinions, feelings) data. The application has been open to be used freely by anyone and has been widely employed worldwide. In addition, several test cases have been organised in European countries. Based on the information submitted by users, an analysis of emerging awareness and learning is performed. The data show that changes in the way the environment is perceived after repeated usage of the application do appear. Specifically, users learn how to recognise different noise levels they are exposed to. Additionally, the subjective data collected indicate an increased user involvement in time and a categorisation effect between pleasant and less pleasant environments.

}, issn = {1932-6203}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0081638}, author = {Becker, Martin and Saverio Caminiti and Fiorella, Donato and Francis, Louise and Pietro Gravino and Haklay, Mordechai Muki and Hotho, Andreas and Vittorio Loreto and Mueller, Juergen and Ricchiuti, Ferdinando and Vito D P Servedio and Alina Sirbu and Francesca Tria} } @article {810, title = {Cohesion, consensus and extreme information in opinion dynamics}, journal = {Advances in Complex Systems}, volume = {16}, number = {06}, year = {2013}, pages = {1350035}, doi = {10.1142/S0219525913500355}, url = {http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219525913500355}, author = {Alina Sirbu and Vittorio Loreto and Vito D P Servedio and Francesca Tria} } @article {789, title = {Opinion dynamics with disagreement and modulated information}, journal = {Journal of Statistical Physics}, year = {2013}, pages = {1{\textendash}20}, doi = {10.1007/s10955-013-0724-x}, url = {http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10955-013-0724-x}, author = {Alina Sirbu and Vittorio Loreto and Vito D P Servedio and Francesca Tria} } @conference {809, title = {XTribe: a web-based social computation platform}, booktitle = {Cloud and Green Computing (CGC), 2013 Third International Conference on}, year = {2013}, publisher = {IEEE}, organization = {IEEE}, doi = {10.1109/CGC.2013.69}, url = {http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=\&arnumber=6686061\&url=http\%3A\%2F\%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org\%2Fxpls\%2Fabs_all.jsp\%3Farnumber\%3D6686061}, author = {Saverio Caminiti and Cicali, Claudio and Pietro Gravino and Vittorio Loreto and Vito D P Servedio and Alina Sirbu and Francesca Tria} }