From the Cover: Semiotic dynamics and collaborative tagging, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2007 - National Acad Sciences
In “Collaborative Tagging and Semiotic Dynamics”, Cattuto, Loreto and Pietronero set down what a user pattern looks like in a social tagging system through empirical statistic analysis of tag co-occurrence. The Yule-Simon model on probability and statistics basis has been used to investigate the long-term memory of users’ tag-vocabulary activities in one of the social tagging system, del.icio.us. A semiotic conceptual model for the tri-partite graph to structure a post as (user, resource,{tag}) is proposed. Therefore, the tri-partite concept which is original from semiotic dynamic literatures is illustrated in the tile as a highlight.
In order to overcome the need for complexity of experimental data, this analysis procedure employs a tag-centric construction view on del.icio.us system. By factoring out two parameters of (users, resource) and adding the set of time parameter from the post, the results of co-occurrence of tagging activities are shown to be consistent with available theoretical calculations in Power Law and Zipf’s Law. Typical applications of utilizing these two statistical theories are well recognized in phenomenon analysis such as in natural language; self-organization and human activity; access patterns; as well as memory–kernel of cognitive psychology. This joint experiment with the well-proved theories offers an alternative method to explore social tagging phenomenon, and for our review to add value on their ideas and research attentions on user behaviors and semiotic concept.
Controversially, however, the research method is likely to be criticized from the semiotic point of views.
First of all, the confusion of two semiotic schools is presented. The authors intend and develop the tri-partite graph from semiotic dynamic concept which follows Charles Sanders Peirce’s (1839-1914) sign theory remarkably in its basic triadic relation within a sign, namely (Represent, Object, Interpretant). The authors have attempted to adopt this triadic elements and rephrase them from (forms {words}, referents {objects}, meanings {categories}) of Steels and Kaplan (1999) to (user, resource,{tag}) in social tagging concept.
However, the authors’ reference of semiotic dynamic is the work of Ke et.al (2002) who adopts the Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) school of semiotics which takes a sign being constructed within a dual relation (signifier, signified). Since these two semiotic schools have been in debates for decades, the authors adopting these two papers as their definition for semiotic dynamic may lead to confusion in general.
Picture 2: the authors' semiotic dynamic?
In order to overcome the need for complexity of experimental data, this analysis procedure employs a tag-centric construction view on del.icio.us system. By factoring out two parameters of (users, resource) and adding the set of time parameter from the post, the results of co-occurrence of tagging activities are shown to be consistent with available theoretical calculations in Power Law and Zipf’s Law. Typical applications of utilizing these two statistical theories are well recognized in phenomenon analysis such as in natural language; self-organization and human activity; access patterns; as well as memory–kernel of cognitive psychology. This joint experiment with the well-proved theories offers an alternative method to explore social tagging phenomenon, and for our review to add value on their ideas and research attentions on user behaviors and semiotic concept.
Controversially, however, the research method is likely to be criticized from the semiotic point of views.
First of all, the confusion of two semiotic schools is presented. The authors intend and develop the tri-partite graph from semiotic dynamic concept which follows Charles Sanders Peirce’s (1839-1914) sign theory remarkably in its basic triadic relation within a sign, namely (Represent, Object, Interpretant). The authors have attempted to adopt this triadic elements and rephrase them from (forms {words}, referents {objects}, meanings {categories}) of Steels and Kaplan (1999) to (user, resource,{tag}) in social tagging concept.
However, the authors’ reference of semiotic dynamic is the work of Ke et.al (2002) who adopts the Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) school of semiotics which takes a sign being constructed within a dual relation (signifier, signified). Since these two semiotic schools have been in debates for decades, the authors adopting these two papers as their definition for semiotic dynamic may lead to confusion in general.
Picture 1: Steels and Kaplan (1999)'s Semiotic Dynamic
Secondly, their proposal for the tag-centric calculation method contradicts their own arguments favoring semantic context. In such context, semantic meaning is supossed to deal with the same Object (the same resource / bookmark in this research) to investigate the relation between different users and users' tags on their co-occurrence. Picture 1 shows the original method for the co-occurrence of items for their semantic meaning in Steels and Kaplan (1999) ‘s semiotic dynamic which the authors have cited from. Picture 2 shows the authors' method for calculating the co-occurrence of tags. Different objects (resources /bookmarks refering to) and different users(interpreters) are ignored in this case. The main focus is on the different tags’ relations, namely frequency and co-occurrence especially in low-high rank tags. Note that our review is not to argue that the authors’ work cannot result in user’s activity patterns since the Power Law and Zipf’s law have been well-proved in such domain. To be specific, if the authors’ work is not in the semiotic dynamic domain, the contradiction may not be this tremendous.
Picture 2: the authors' semiotic dynamic?