How do people use a mobile shared map annotation system to communicate?

The goal of this initial exploratory part of the research will be to define some statistical traits of this kind of communication. As for instance:

– what do they talk about (manual categorization);

– where are they when they talk about something?

– what are they reading?

– where are they when they are reading something?

– when are they interacting to what?

– which part of the city do they talk more about?

– which kind of search do they perform?

– which answers do they check?

– are the messages chained?

Additionally, if we implement a concept of buddy list or foaf, we can enquiry more on this communication process in the following:

– to whom is the message directed?

– is it kept private or not?

– where the receiver retrieved the message?

– when the receiver retrieved the message?

– how many messages rested within the group?

On the spatial distribution of the messages we can try to enquiry what is the unit of analysis that defined the “cluster” to which different messages belongs to. How to define this grouping may be determined by the results of the other enquiry.

Using some extra layers derived from a commercial GIS might be possible then to assign other characteristics or values to the point underlying the definition of the clusters.

In addition, it might be possible to give people the ability to assign a social weight to the messages. Using this hierarchy of the messages, we can abstract the categories or messages which emerge from the interaction of the users. [folksonomies]

The last interest of research might be to define common sense knowledge based on the emerging categories in the system. [AI]