On Social Semantics in Information Retrieval: from Knowledge Discovery to Collective Web Intelligence in the Social Semantic Web

This work connects the concepts and the methods of social networks and the semantic web to support the analysis of a social semantic web that combines human intelligence with machine learning and natural language processing. In this context, social networks, as instances of the social web, are capable in delivering social network data and document collections on a tremendous scale, inducing thematic dynamics that cannot be achieved by traditional expert resources. The question of an automatic conversion, annotation and processing, however, is central to the debate of the benefits of the social semantic web. Which kind of technologies and methods are available, adequate and contribute to the processing of this rapidly rising flood of information and at the same time being capable of using the wealth of information in this large, but more importantly decentralized internet. The present work researches the performance of social semantic-induced categorization by means of different document models. We will shed light on the question, to which level social networks and social ontologies contribute to selected areas within the information retrieval area.