SGER: A Web Sociologist's Workbench

Stanford University, Stanford CA

Investigators

Abstract

Proposal ID: IIS-0624725 PI: Garcia-Molina, Hector Institution: Stanford University Title: SGER: A Web Sociologist's Workbench Abstract This proposal is to design and build integrated software tools that will help social scientists analyze large time series snapshots of World Wide Web materials. The researchers' WebBase facility has been generating such topic specific Web collections since 2001. During the aftermath of the Katrina hurricane disaster pages were collected from a set of 400 Web sites every day. The site set was selected by personnel at the Library of Congress and the California Digital Library. The proposed tools will help social scientists track the development of topics across a time series such as the Katrina collections. The software architecture proposed is modular. Requirements, attributes, and associated functionalities were identified from discussions between the Computer Science researchers and faculty at Stanford's Communications Department where such social science applications and analyses are pursued. This project is inherently cross disciplinary, challenging and innovative. As such, it involves risk in pushing the boundaries of research capability. Successful outcome will broadly impact the social sciences by providing new means for conducting research over World Wide Web content. Data collected will be publicly available., as well as the new software tools coming out of this effort.