Online Human Footprints

A special issue of Multimodal Technologies and Interaction (ISSN 2414-4088).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 April 2021) | Viewed by 242

Special Issue Editors

Department of Information Systems, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
Interests: social media mining; spectral and emotional signatures; temporal networks and interactions
School of Business, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
Interests: search engines; information seeking; information in financial markets; game theory for keyword labeling and search

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

A “footprint” is how an entity’s presence is felt, through the mark it leaves on the place. We speak of a city’s ecological footprint or a country’s geopolitical footprint on a different continent (e.g., China’s in Africa). Similarly, a person’s actual footprint signifies that he/she was there, and the mark they left. In an online environment, a footprint is the lasting mark left by an entity in that setting. Different from online behavior, the idea of an online footprint relates to the lasting trace that remains of an entity’s original behavior. The entity can be an individual, organization, or even a country. The footprint can be a byproduct of the entity’s behaviors, or its purpose. An online footprint may be specific to an individual and may reveal or narrow down their identity—in which case the footprint also serves as an identifying signature.

What constitutes a person’s signature? Since the decline of the Web and the rise of separate closed platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, chatting apps, etc.), a given person has not a single footprint but many. People have different projections on different platforms and may interact differently with different multimodal technologies. Even within a single platform, people relish creating multiple identities. Non-human agents further cloud the picture. Sock puppet accounts are used for the manipulation of opinions and commercial purposes, and cyborg and bot accounts flourish, creating an online mishmash of identities and behaviors.

In terms of footprints in general, different groups leave different footprints, and different societies may create different traces through the impact they have. Organizations and countries also leave footprints that have cultural characteristics. Traces can be identified by their cultural characteristics and societal impacts. A well-known example is the impact of the online activity of Cambridge Analytica, which reached way beyond online platforms and into the global political arena.

This Special Issue aims to coalesce the concept of an online human footprint as a useful way to frame research into topics such as the following:

  • Theories and definitions of online human traces and footprints: what constitutes an overall online human footprint? What is its scope? Are there typical and atypical footprints?
  • Individual and group-level footprints;
  • Within-platform versus between-platform footprints;
  • Characteristics of abstract, cross-platform, online human footprints;
  • Methods to quantify and measure online footprints;
  • Evolution of footprints and signatures over time with regard to their size, pattern, impact, and other characteristics;
  • Identifying and/or characterizing entities from their different online footprints;
  • Affective aspects of online human footprints;
  • Passive versus active footprints;
  • Footprints that are purposely designed to be noticed, versus incidental byproducts, versus behaviors/technologies intended to hide tracks;
  • What constitutes a human footprint in an algorithmic-driven landscape of newsfeeds, personalized automated recommendations, and searches?
  • Defining the abstraction and frameworks for identifying human footprints in an algorithmic landscape;
  • Methodological opportunities and challenges of using human footprint data in research in other disciplines.

Dr. Osnat Mokryn
Dr. David Bodoff
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers

There is no accepted submissions to this special issue at this moment.
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