Space and Time as a Primary Classification Criterion for Information Retrieval in Distributed Social Networking

TL;DR

This paper proposes a decentralized, agent-oriented information retrieval system that leverages spatiotemporal, social, and semantic relations to better mimic human search behaviors in social networking contexts.

Contribution

It introduces a novel IR architecture that uses space and time as primary criteria, integrating multiple relation types for improved social computing applications.

Findings

Large evaluation study with Wikipedia articles

Spatiotemporal references implicitly conserve other relations

Architecture aligns with emerging mobile and decentralized social networks

Abstract

We discuss in a compact way how the implicit relations between spatiotemporal relatedness of information items, spatiotemporal relatedness of users, social relatedness of users and semantic relatedness of information items may be exploited for an information retrieval architecture that operates along the lines of human ways of searching. The decentralized and agent oriented architecture mirrors emerging trends such as upcoming mobile and decentralized social networking as a new paradigm in social computing and is targetted to satisfy broader and more subtly interlinked information demands beyond immediate information needs which can be readily satisfied with current IR services. We briefly discuss why using spatio-temporal references as primary information criterion implicitly conserves other relations and is thus suitable for such an architecture. We finally shortly point to results from a large evaluation study using Wikipedia articles.