e-Research tool development

The growing adoption of e-research tools has lead to changes in social and communication research (Jankowski, 2009).
E-research refers to the development of, and support for, digital technologies to facilitate processes in social science research domains(JISC, n.d.). While e-research is concerned with technologies that support all phases of scientific research, in social communication research e-research often focuses on processing and analyzing a large amount of textual data, as seen in the TextGrid Project in Germany (http://www.textgrid.de). With the growing proliferation of personal blogs, organizational sites, citizen media, and social networking services, e-research tools for humanists and social scientists have gradually become available.
Typical technologies in this domain include LexiURL (Thelwall, 2009), Virtual Observatory for the Study of Online Networks (Ackland, 2009), and Internet Community Text Analyzer (ICTA; Gruzd, 2009a).

In contrast to the e-research developments in North America and
Europe, Soon and Park (2009) note that digital tools to support e-research are
rare in Asia, even in South Korea with its high IT penetration, extensive
network infrastructure, and widespread use of the Korean language on the
Internet (Internet World Stats, 2008). Thus, we attempt to develop an e-research
tool for automatic discovery of online communication networks on the Korean
web.

Recent overview of e-Research tools that are being developed by the WCU Webometrics Institute can be found at Prof. Han Woo Park's invited speech, Department of Media & Communication, City University of Hong Kong, 29 March 2010 (Topic: Mapping social, political, and scientific landscape using webometric method) The video stream of the seminar held on 29 March 2010 is now available online, following URL is the direct URL to access. Direct URL: http://www6.cityu.edu.hk/com/20100329_Park.aspx,
PowerPoint slide:

http://www.slideshare.net/hanpark/mappingsocialpoliticalandscientificlandscapeusingwebometrcs-cityunivofhongkong24march2010-100324011529-phpapp02

The contents are as follows:

- KINM (Korean Internet Network Miner)
- CyNetMetricA (Cyworld Network Metric Analyzer)
- WeboNaver (Webometrics Tool for Naver)

These research tools will provide the more depth of research for networks on the Korean web.

  • Mapping the e-science landscape in South Korea using the webometrics method

There is a burgeoning interest among social scientists in the development of escience technologies and research practices around world. However, the international social science research literature has not systematically examined e-science approaches in Asia in general and Korea in particular. This article presents empirical findings from a webometrics analysis of the semantic variation, disciplinary scope, and institutional structure of e-science programs in South Korea. The findings suggest that some escience terms, including cyberinfrastructure and digital humanities, have prominent Korean web presences. At the same time, Korean government-sponsored national escience centers and their affiliates do not have a strong web presence and do not actively participate in the hyperlink network that connects e-science-related institutional websites. Instead, they have a closed network among themselves. This result stems from the institutional dynamics within Korea’s public and private e-science research communities.

  • Developing the Korean Internet Network Miner (KINM): E-research Tool
    for Social Network Analysis of Blogosphere in South Korea

The development of e-research tools has lead to changes in social science research of the Internet. In spite of the growing proliferation of personal blogs in non-English speaking countries including South Korea, e-research tools for non-English blogs have not systematically been developed. Thus, we attempt to develop an e-research tool for automatic discovery of blog communication networks on the Korean web. While traditional data mining research focuses largely on algorithms for inferring association rules and other statistical correlation measures in a given blog data set, we are particularly interested in a large-scale blog network analysis using automatic tools. Therefore, we would like to illustrate the process of developing our analytic tool called the Korean Internet Network Miner (KINM).

  • WeboNaver ; Webometrics Tool for Korean Naver

This e-research was supported by WCU(World Class University) program through the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology(No. 515-82-06574).
When you use this tool for your own academic research, you should include this acknowledgement in your work. Further, you should not use this tool for commercial purposes without prior permission from Principal Investigator Prof. Han Woo PARK at YoungNam University. We do not accept any responsibility for any misuse or abuse of the Naver. You should follow all ethical guidelines with respect to API-based Naver search.

WCU Webometrics Institute at YeungNam University, 2009. This work may be copied freely for non-commercial research and study.
If you wish to do any of the other acts restricted by the copyright, you should apply in writing to webmaster(wcuatyeungnam@gmail.com)
Copyright(C) WCU Webometrics Institute at YeungNam University, Korea 2009