Durch die Vielzahl von heterogenen Informationsquellen sehen sich viele Nutzer einer kaum überschaubaren Informationsflut gegenüber. Aus diesem Grund werden durch diese Arbeit die gängigen Nachrichtenformate analysiert und der aktuelle Stand der Technik im Bereich der Nachrichtenaggregatoren dargelegt. Dabei werden diese Analysen immer mit Blick auf die Möglichkeiten einer personalisierten Filterung der Inhalte durchgeführt. Anschließend wird eine im Rahmen dieser Arbeit entstandene Infrastruktur für die Aggregation, personalisierte Filterung und kollaborative Empfehlung von Inhalten aus heterogenen Nachrichtenquellen vorgestellt. Dabei wird detailiert auf die zu Grunde liegenden Konzepte eingegangen und deren praktische Umsetzung beschrieben.

With the rapid innovation of information technology and online service, the Internet as a new media has drastically changed the online behavior of human interaction. Microblogging that limits the number of characters allowed in a post to 140 words has emerged as a new and frequent communication via web postings. Microblogging has been used not only for social interaction but also for marketing and product promotion by companies and organizations. As the development of social community services become more mature, the new concept called ¡§social commerce,¡¨ that combines social networking and online shopping appears to be a promising new business model. The purpose of this study is to examine the usage behavior of microblogging by investigating the effect of social support and other factors on the intention to continue use a microblog and the intention to accept social commerce. An online survey was conducted on Plurk users. The results indicate that: (1) the motivations for writing blogs, social support and website quality have significant influences on the relationship quality between users and Plurk. Higher perceived social support and higher website quality result in a higher level of relationship quality; (2) The motivations for writing blogs and the perceived social support increase the self-disclosre behavior; (3) The perceived social support and website quality have positive impact on social commerce intention; and (4) The motivations for writing blogs, website quality, relationsip quality and self-disclosure have positive impacts on the intention to continue use the microblog.

This study explores how people with medical concerns seek and perceive social support via Weibo—a social network site in China. The study conducts both a content analysis and an in-depth interview for a comprehensive understanding of the nature of social support on Weibo. Altogether 2548 postings and replies from four Weibo support groups—the Breast Cancer Group, the Arthritis Group, Baby Eczema Group and Children’s Health Group—were categorized into 9 types with a deductive thematic analysis; twenty participants from these four Weibo groups were recruited in the in-depth interview to explore how people seek and perceive social support from Weibo. Weibo stands out as a platform for people to exchange social support for its convenience, multiple functions, and strong ability to connect each other. Though there are some disadvantages of Weibo social support identified by Weibo users, they can, to some extent, be avoided and reduced under appropriate administration.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: We are living in an increasingly global and connected society with information creation increasing at exponential rates. The research sets out to help solve the problem of mitigating the effects of information overload in order to increase the novelty of our interactions in the digital age. Online social-networks and microblogging services allow people across the world to take part in a public conversation. These tools have inherent constraints on how much communication can feasibly occur. Become too connected and a user will receive too much information to reasonably process. On Twitter (a microblogging service), lists are a tool for users to create separate feeds. The research determines whether lists are an effective tool for coping with information overload (abundance of updates). Using models of sustainable online discourse and information overload on computer-mediated communication tools, the research found that lists are an effective tool to cope with information overload on microblogging services. Quantitatively, individuals who make use of lists follow more users and when they start using lists they increase the amount of information resources (following other users) at a greater rate than those who do not use lists. Qualitatively, the research also provides insight into the reasons why people use lists. The research adds new academic relevance to ‘information overload’ and ‘online sustainability’ models previously not used in the context of feed-based online CMC tools, and deepens the understanding and importance of usercurated filtering as a way to reap the benefits from the increasing abundance of information in the digital age. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Ons leef in ’n toenemend globale en gekonnekteerde samelewing waarin inligtingskepping toeneem teen ’n eksponensiële koers. Hierdie navorsing het ten doel om die newe-effekte van die oorvloed van inligting te verlig sodat daar meer waarde uit ons interaksies in die digitale era kan geput kan word. Aanlyn sosiale-netwerke en mikroblog-dienste laat mense wêreldwyd toe om deel te neem in ’n openbare gesprek. Hierdie aanlyn gereedskap het egter inherente beperkinge op hoeveel kommunikasie prakties moontlik is. Wanneer gebruikers té gekonnekteer raak, word daar te veel ingligting ontvang om redelikerwys verwerk te kan word. Op Twitter (’n mikroblog-diens) is lyste ’n hulpmiddel waarmee gebruikers afsonderlike strome van inligting kan skep. Deur die gebruik van modelle van ‘volhoubare aanlyn diskoers’ en ‘inligtingoorlading’, bewys hierdie navorsing dat lyste ’n doeltreffende hulpmiddel is om die oorvloed van inligting te verlig op mikroblog-dienste. Kwantitatief volg gebruikers wat lyste gebruik meer gebruikers vergeleke met die wat nie lyste gebruik nie. Wanner hul lyste begin gebruik, volg hulle gebruikers teen ’n hoër koers as dié wat nie lyste gebruik nie. Kwalitatief bied die navorsing ook insig oor die redes vir die gebruik van lyste. Die navorsing onderstreep die akademiese relevansie van ‘inligtingoorlading’ en ‘aanlyn volhoubaarheid’ modelle wat nie voorheen gebruik is in die konteks van stroom-gebaseerde aanlyn gereedskap nie, en verdiep die begrip en belangrikheid van gebruiker-saamgestelde filtrering as ’n manier om die voordele te trek uit die toenemende oorvloed van inligting in die digitale era.

abstract: The use of blogging tools in the second language classroom has been investigated from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives (Alm, 2009; Armstrong & Retterer, 2008; Dippold, 2009; Ducate & Lomicka, 2008; Elola & Oskoz, 2008; Jauregi & Banados, 2008; Lee, 2009; Petersen, Divitini, & Chabert, 2008; Pinkman, 2005; Raith, 2009; Soares, 2008; Sun, 2009, 2012; Vurdien, 2011; Yang, 2009) and a growing number of studies examine the use of microblogging tools for language learning (Antenos-Conforti, 2009; Borau, Ullrich, Feng, & Shen, 2009; Lomicka & Lord, 2011; Perifanou, 2009). Grounded in Cultural Historical Activity Theory (Engestrom, 1987), the present study explores the outcomes of a semester-long project based on the Bridging Activities framework (Thorne & Reinhardt, 2008) and implemented in an intermediate hybrid Spanish-language course at a large public university in Arizona, in which students used microblogging and blogging tools to collect digital texts, analyze perspectives of the target culture, and participate as part of an online community of language learners with a broader audience of native speakers. The research questions are: (1) What technology is used by the students, with what frequency and for what purposes in both English and Spanish prior to beginning the project?, (2) What are students' values and attitudes toward using Twitter and Blogger as tools for learning Spanish and how do they change over time through their use in the project during the semester course?, and (3) What tensions emerge in the activity systems of the intermediate Spanish-language students throughout the process of using Twitter and Blogger for the project? What are the underlying reasons for the tensions? How are they resolved? The data was collected using pre-, post-, and periodic surveys, which included Likert and open-ended questions, as well as the participants' microblog and blog posts. The quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and the qualitative data was analyzed to identify emerging themes following the Constant Comparative Method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Finally, three participant outliers were selected as case studies for activity theoretical analysis in order to identify tensions and, through their resolution, evidence of expansive learning. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Spanish 2015

In this report we make an attempt to analyze where Swedish Twitter users believe the line is drawn between the private and public. Our goal is to find out what the factors are that determine what they decide to write on Twitter and what not. A survey was sent out and spread amongst Swedish Twitter users during one week to provide us with the data to answer our question formulation. The results do not draw an exact line between the private and the public but it nevertheless provides us with an idea of what users think is inappropriate to write about on Twitter. Through the study we found out that our respondents believe that it is inappropriate to write private information about others than them self. They also believe that racist and offensive comments are inappropiate. Our study also gives us some indication that Swedish Twitter users are rather open concerning sharing of private information about themselves.

This master's thesis focuses on the creation of microblogging services for teams. The thesis describes the research and analysis of current microblogging services and finding their strength and weaknesses. Based on the analysis is designed new service which focuses on communication between team members. It is also discussed implementation of the proposed service and on the conclusion are summarized future extensions to improve this service.

There is a fast increase of information and data generation in virtual environments due to microblogging sites such as Twitter, a social network that produces an average of 8, 000 tweets per second, and up to 550 million tweets per day. That's why this and many other social networks are overloaded with content, making it difficult for users to identify information topics because of the large number of tweets related to different issues. Due to the uncertainty that harms users who created the content, this study proposes a method for inferring the most representative topics that occurred in a time period of 1 day through the selection of user profiles who are experts in sports and politics. It is calculated considering the number of times this topic was mentioned by experts in their timelines. This experiment included a dataset extracted from Twitter, which contains 10, 750 tweets related to sports and 8, 758 tweets related to politics. All tweets were obtained from user timelines selected by the researchers, who were considered experts in their respective subjects due to the content of their tweets. The results show that the effective selection of users, together with the index of relevance implemented for the topics, can help to more easily find important topics in both sport and politics.

Das Internet ist ein riesiger Experimentierkasten für neue Anwendungssysteme. Potenziell enthält insbesondere das sogenannte Web 2.0 Ideen und Mechanismen, die auch im Organisationsumfeld die Zusammenarbeit zwischen Mitarbeitern unterstützen können. Ein jüngstes Beispiel hierfür sind die von Facebook bekannten Activity Streams. Fraglich ist nun, wie eine Adaption dieses Web 2.0-Vorbilds in Organisationen auszugestalten ist. Hierfür ist zu klären, welcher Anwendungsfall von Activity Streams abgedeckt werden kann, welche Anforderungen hieraus sowie aus dem allgemeinen organisationalen Kontext entstehen und wie schließlich ein entsprechendes Anwendungssystem zu konzipieren ist. Die Arbeit zielt auf die Beantwortung dieser Fragestellungen in Form eines Fachkonzepts, welches anschließend durch eine prototypische Implementierung sowie die Durchführung von Fallstudien in realen Einsatzszenarien Anwendung findet.

Das Internet ist ein riesiger Experimentierkasten für neue Anwendungssysteme. Potenziell enthält insbesondere das sogenannte Web 2.0 Ideen und Mechanismen, die auch im Organisationsumfeld die Zusammenarbeit zwischen Mitarbeitern unterstützen können. Ein jüngstes Beispiel hierfür sind die von Facebook bekannten Activity Streams. Fraglich ist nun, wie eine Adaption dieses Web 2.0-Vorbilds in Organisationen auszugestalten ist. Hierfür ist zu klären, welcher Anwendungsfall von Activity Streams abgedeckt werden kann, welche Anforderungen hieraus sowie aus dem allgemeinen organisationalen Kontext entstehen und wie schließlich ein entsprechendes Anwendungssystem zu konzipieren ist. Die Arbeit zielt auf die Beantwortung dieser Fragestellungen in Form eines Fachkonzepts, welches anschließend durch eine prototypische Implementierung sowie die Durchführung von Fallstudien in realen Einsatzszenarien Anwendung findet.