Oxford Internet Institute

15 January 2018

Authors: Brent Mittelstadt

Algorithmic systems (such as those deciding mortgage applications, or sentencing decisions) can be very difficult to understand, for experts as well as the general public. Image: Ken Lane (CC ... Read More Could Counterfactuals Explain Algorithmic Decisions Without Opening the Black Box?

1 October 2017

Authors: Scott A. Hale

Twitter has rolled out a limited trial of 280 characters for some of its users. In announcing the trial, Twitter specifically noted that most Japanese tweets had 15 characters ... Read More Twitter trials 280 characters, but its success in Japan is more than a character difference

11 July 2017

Authors: Vili Lehdonvirta

Online Labour Index top occupation by country, 1-6 July 2017 The Internet has created a global market for digitally delivered freelance work, which is currently growing rapidly. Our new ... Read More Where are online workers located? The international division of digital gig work

10 July 2017

Authors: Vili Lehdonvirta

Online Labour Index, July 2016 – June 2017 (28-day moving average) Online freelancing and crowdwork are some of the terms used for temporary and project-based work conducted remotely over ... Read More The online gig economy grew 26% over the past year

6 December 2016

Authors: Taha Yasseri

2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump in a residential backyard near Jordan Creek Parkway and Cody Drive in West Des Moines, Iowa, with lights and security cameras. Image by Tony ... Read More Can we predict electoral outcomes from Wikipedia traffic?

10 November 2016

Authors: Mark Graham

Data Scientist/Data Hacker Oxford Internet Institute, 1 St Giles, Oxford Grade 7: £31,076 – £38,183 p.a. The Oxford Internet Institute is a leading centre for research into individual, collective ... Read More Join our team: we’re hiring a Data Scientist / Data Hacker

19 September 2016

Authors: Vili Lehdonvirta

The Online Labour Index (OLI) is a new economic indicator that provides an online labour market equivalent of conventional labour market statistics. It is available online as an interactive visualization ... Read More Which countries and occupations are embracing the online gig economy?

17 May 2016

Authors: Mark Graham

This chapter outlines how one might utilize the massive amounts of web-based, geographically-referenced digital social data for geographical research. Because much of these data are user-generated and produced through ... Read More New publication – Using Geotagged Digital Social Data in Geographic Research

3 March 2016

Authors: Taha Yasseri

We recently announced the start of an exciting new research project that will involve the use of topic modelling in understanding the patterns in submitted stories to the Everyday Sexism website. Here, we briefly explain ... Read More Topic modelling content from the “Everyday Sexism” project: what’s it all about?

7 September 2015

Authors: Mark Graham

Network of Wikipedia edits between world regions, normalised for each target region. The edges are coloured according to the source region. Percentages denote self-edits (not depicted). I am very ... Read More New publication – Digital Divisions of Labor and Informational Magnetism: Mapping Participation in Wikipedia

23 July 2015

Authors: Jonathan Bright

One day all our trees will be electric. Image from Smart City Exhibition 2014 by Forum PA (Flickr). “Big data” is a growing area of interest for public policy ... Read More How big data is breathing new life into the smart cities concept

11 May 2015

Authors: Helen Margetts

Digital data generated during election campaigns are a valuable – but underused – source of information for political parties, pollsters and political analysts alike. They contain signals of what ... Read More Digital Disconnect: Parties, Pollsters and Political Analysis in #GE2015

31 March 2015

Authors: Mark Graham

Spatial distribution of placenames in the GeoNames gazetteer Spatial distibution of placenames in GeoNames included in the dataset of populated places with more than a thousand inhabitants, compared to ... Read More New publication – Mapping Information Wealth and Poverty: The Geography of Gazetteers

31 March 2015

Authors: Mark Graham

Spatial distribution of placenames in the GeoNames gazetteer Spatial distibution of placenames in GeoNames included in the dataset of populated places with more than a thousand inhabitants, compared to ... Read More New paper – Mapping Information Wealth and Poverty: The Geography of Gazetteers

21 January 2015

Authors: Mark Graham

The previous post demonstrated not only that Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa are net-importers of content on Wikipedia (Sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, receives 10.7 more ... Read More Informational Magnetism on Wikipedia: mapping edit focus

15 January 2015

Authors: Mark Graham

The previous posts about the geography of contributions to Wikipedia showed the varying types of local engagement that different regions have, the primary reason that Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, ... Read More Informational Magnetism on Wikipedia: geographic networks of edits

16 December 2014

Authors: Mark Graham

The previous two posts about the geography of contributions to Wikipedia showed both the different types of local engagement that different regions have, and the primary reason that Sub-Saharan ... Read More Digging deeper into the localness of participation in Sub-Saharan African Wikipedia content

12 December 2014

Authors: Mark Graham

An earlier post showed how different parts of the world have very different levels of engagement with local content in Wikipedia. The data presented there showed that a majority ... Read More Explaining locally-contributed content in Wikipedia about Sub-Saharan Africa

13 November 2014

Authors: Rebecca Eynon

Despite the speculation about the role massively open online courses (MOOCs) may play in higher education, empirical research that explores the realities of interacting and learning in MOOCs is ... Read More Two years after the NYT’s ‘Year of the MOOC’: how much do we actually know about them?