Online software tutorials help a wide range of users acquire skills with complex software, but are not always easy to follow. For example, a tutorial might target users with a high skill level, or it might contain errors and omissions. Prior work has shown that user contributions, such as user comments, can add value to a tutorial. Building on this prior work, we investigate an approach to soliciting structured tutorial enhancements from tutorial readers. We illustrate this approach through a prototype called Antorial, and evaluate its impact on reader contributions through a multi-session evaluation with 13 participants. Our findings suggest that structuring tutorial contributions has positive impacts on both the number and type of reader contributions. Our findings also point to design considerations for systems that aim to support community-based tutorial refinement, and suggest promising directions for future research. / February 2017

This thesis introduces Comquest, an adaptive framework designed for the large-scale collection and integration of user comments from the Web. User comments are featured on many websites and there is growing interest in mining and studying user comments in applications, such as opinion mining and information diffusion. However, crawling user comments generally requires hard-coded solutions that are tethered to specific websites, which is hard to scale and maintain. To achieve a generalizable and scalable comment crawling solution, Comquest employs two website-agnostic approaches for comment crawling: Web API querying and HTML data extraction. When the target Web page is integrated with a third-party commenting system whose Web API that is in Comquest’s knowledge base, it retrieves comments by sending HTTP requests to the API’s URL with parameters extracted from the target webpage. The approach has several challenges. Firstly, extracting accurate parameter values to construct HTTP requests is difficult since they are buried deep within the HTML string of web documents (if they exist). Secondly, the solution needs to generalize both vertically (within a website) and horizontally (across unseen websites). To tackle these challenges, the parameter extraction problem is treated as a variant of the multiclass Named Entity Recognition (NER) problem, where the entities represent the values of the parameters. Comquest leverages a sequential labeling deep learning model to identify parameter values within HTML source codes. When the commenting system is native to the website or unknown, Comquest detects and extracts user comments from fully rendered Web pages. However, comments are often hidden until triggered by specific user interaction, such as clicking on a designated page element among many other clickable elements. Furthermore, comments are typically presented as structured record-like Web data with high structure variations, making them difficult to detect and extract from the target Web page along with other record-like Web data. Comquest utilizes deep learning models and Web record extraction algorithms to automate the process of triggering, extracting, and classifying comments. Comquest has been implemented as a comprehensive system that consists of an administration web portal, a task controller, and a crawler backend. It provides a useful tool for collecting comments that represent a wider range of opinions, stances, and sentiments from websites on a global scale. / Computer and Information Science

Virtual reality (VR) has had the reputation of being a revolutionising technology ever since it emerged in the early 1960s, but virtual is not yet a successful reality in journalistic practice. Examining VR’s current situation and the factors preventing it from reaching its predicted potential in digital journalism, this paper analyses the user comments (n = 770) on 15 journalistic VR apps offered by media organizations, with the help of a qualitative-reductive content analysis. Deductive categories of analysis contain the constructs of immersion, emotion, usability, and utility, which are further specified by inductive subcategories in the course of the analysis. Results show that users positively highlight different aspects of emotion and immersion that the VR apps elicit, and criticize journalistic VR apps for their low levels of utility and usability. Implications for journalistic practice and research are subsequently drawn.

Departing from the increasing threat that organized hate groups and their manipulative practices pose to contemporary society, this thesis seeks to unravel the workings of digital hate culture and to highlight the potential of civil society-led counter initiatives to combat the spread of hatred online. The research is based on a twofold qualitative content analysis. In a first step, the intended practices of two opposing groups – an organized hate group (Reconquista Germanica) and an organized counter speech group (Reconquista Internet) – are analyzed based on a set of internal strategic communication documents. In a second step, three comment threads on Facebook are examined to illustrate the actualized practices of users spreading hate and users who counter-speak. By drawing on a four-dimensional framework, the analysis thereby considers how practices, discourses, power relations, and the technological affordances of Facebook shape this interplay. With theoretical reference to Mouffe’s (2005) work on the antagonistic nature of the political and today’s post-political Zeitgeist, this thesis ultimately comes to discuss whether such confrontations between exponents of digital hate culture and counter speakers must be understood as irrefutable antagonisms or if productive agonism can be fostered through a mutual understanding of one another as legitimate adversaries.What the analysis evinces is that the discussions carried out between the two opposing camps are highly moralized, resulting in an antagonistic battle between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ that interferes with the possibility for productive agonism. It is further shown that, in this post-political discussion climate, counter speech carries a crucial responsibility to conform to moral values and maintain professional and ethical standards to set itself apart from the harmful practices of digital hate culture. Otherwise, as the analysis indicates, counter efforts are likely to spur on destructive dynamics, further hardening the fronts between opposing positions that characterize today’s increasingly polarized societies.

Το Internet επεκτείνεται και οι χρήστες του αυξάνονται με ρυθμούς γεωμετρικής προόδου. Ήδη διαδραματίζει καθοριστικό ρόλο στην ταξιδιωτική βιομηχανία. Και στην πραγματικότητα αποτελεί την κύρια δεξαμενή άντλησης οποιασδήποτε μορφή πληροφόρησης της ταξιδιωτικής βιομηχανίας. Αν και αποτελούν νέες σχετικά έννοιες τα δίκτυα κοινωνικής ενημέρωσης αλλά και το περιεχόμενο (UGC) που παράγεται από τους καταναλωτές κερδίζουν συνεχώς μερίδιο στους ταξιδιωτικούς καταναλωτές και έτσι επηρεάζουν όλο και πιο έντονα τις αποφάσεις τους. Οι αποφάσεις τους αυτές έχουν σαν συνέπεια να αυξάνουν όλο και περισσότερο το μέρος της τουριστικής ζήτησης που μετακινείται προς το ηλεκτρονικό εμπόριο. Αφού εξεταστούν οι επιπτώσεις του UGC, στην ταξιδιωτική βιομηχανία, στην οποία οι μονάδες φιλοξενίας έχουν το μεγαλύτερο μερίδιο αγοράς, η έρευνα αυτή θα εστιαστεί κυρίως στις επιπτώσεις που ήδη έχει επιφέρει, στις ξενοδοχειακές μονάδες του ευρύτερου κέντρου της Αθήνας. Θα εξετάσει διεξοδικά τις συσχετίσεις που επιφέρουν τα reviews των καταναλωτών στον καθορισμό της τιμής των ξενοδοχείων, θα εξετάσει τις συσχετίσεις που μπορούν να έχουν οι παρεχόμενες υπηρεσίες των ξενοδοχείων στην διαμόρφωση των βαθμολογιών των κυριότερων ταξιδιωτικών σελίδων. Θα γίνει μία καταγραφή των κυριοτέρων από αυτές και θα επεξεργαστούν τα στοιχεία- σχόλια που έχουν οι επτά δημοφιλέστερες. Θα ερευνηθούν οι συσχετίσεις των βαθμολογιών με τις κατηγορίες των ξενοδοχείων της Αθήνας, τόσο σε επίπεδο αστέρων όσο και σε επίπεδο μεγέθους. Θα εξετάσει την συμπεριφορά των διάφορων ομάδων που στέλνουν σχόλια στο διαδίκτυο σε σχέση με τι διάφορες κατηγορίες των ξενοδοχείων. Επίσης θα ερευνηθούν οι διαφορές θερινής και χειμερινής τιμής και πως αυτές επηρεάζονται από την αξιολόγηση των ταξιδιωτικών ιστοσελίδων, σε συνδυασμό με τις διάφορες κατηγορίες. Tέλος, θα ερευνηθούν οι συσχετίσεις των βαθμολογιών με τις τιμές και τα κύρια χαρακτηριστικά των ξενοδοχείων (παροχές, απόσταση από μέσα μεταφοράς, απόσταση από κέντρο κλπ.) αλλά και αντίστροφα το κατά πόσο οι τιμές επηρεάζονται και με ποιό πρόσημο και ένταση από τις αξιολογήσεις των ταξιδιωτικών ιστοσελίδων. Η επιρροή τους στην τιμή και επομένως στον ανταγωνισμό, μήπως οδηγεί σε "παραπλανητικά" σχόλια; Ποια η αξιοπιστία τους; Θα μετρηθεί με τεστ αξιοπιστίας όλων των ταξιδιωτικών ιστοσελίδων και θα συγκριθεί με υπάρχοντα επαγγελματικά εμπορικά εργαλεία. Τέλος, θα προσπαθήσει η έρευνα αυτή να βρει εργαλεία τα οποία με απλούς αλλά δόκιμους τρόπους θα προσπαθήσουν να εκτιμήσουν την τιμή που μπορούν να έχουν οι ξενοδοχειακές μονάδες και αν μπορέσουν να ξεπεράσουν τα reliability test, να εξεταστεί η δυνατότητα της εφαρμογής τους σαν ένας εναλλακτικός τρόπος τιμολόγησης, πέρα από τις συνήθεις μεθόδους τιμολόγησης κόστους και ανταγωνισμού. / The Internet expands and users are increasing at a rate of geometric progress. Already plays a key role in the travel industry. And the reality is the main tank pumping any form of information of the travel industry. Although these are new concepts for the networks social media and content (UGC-) produced by consumers are gaining market share in travel consumers and thus affect more and more strongly their decisions. Their decisions have resulted to increase more and more the part of tourist demand that moves toward e-commerce. After examining the effect of the UGC-, in the travel industry, in which the hospitality units have the largest market share, this research will focus mainly on the effects which already has brought ,the hotel units of the larger center of Athens. We will examine in detail the assignments which bring about the reviews of the consumer in determining the price of hotels, will examine the correlations which can have the services of hotels in configuration of scores of major travel pages. There will be a record of the main from them and draw up the data; reviews the seven most popular. We will investigate the correlations of the scores for each of the categories of hotels in Athens, both star and sizes. We will examine the behavior of the various groups to send comments on the internet in relation to what various categories of hotels. It will also investigate the differences between summer and winter price and that those affected by the assessment of travel sites, in conjunction with the various categories.Finally, will investigate the correlations of scores with the values and the main features of the hotel (facilities, distance from transport, distance from center etc. ) and vice versa whether prices are influenced and with what sign and intensity of the evaluations of travel sites. Their influence on price and therefore in competition, that leads to a "misleading" comments? What their credibility? Will be measured with test reliability of all travel sites and will be compared with existing professional commercial tools. Finally, we will try to research this to find tools with simple but trainee ways will try to appreciate the value that may have been the hotel units and if they can overcome the reliability test, to examine the possibility of implementing them as an alternative billing method, apart from the usual methods cost pricing and competition.