Raison d'être

Given the global growth and pervasiveness of social media, the Unit for Social Semantics at NUI Galway was set up to look at social media from a unique standpoint: building the technologies to analyse and improve social systems, but also developing an understanding of how people/organisations are using social media to collaborate around shared goals and collectively drive social change and innovation.

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Reference point

The Unit provides a focussed hub for Social Semantic Web research, such that it can be referred to nationally and internationally as a contact point for those interested in both the technologies and the understanding of social media.

Interdisciplinary

The fusion of technology-oriented research along with the social science and information systems research at NUI Galway provides the necessary combination of intellectual capital and diverse research environments that are required for social media research activities.

Connected

The Unit works with many international partners and is a leader of and/or member of various working groups (IFIP WG 12.7, W3C Social Web WG, Social IG) that enable it to stay abreast of and involved in emerging activities.

Leadership

The leader of the Unit for Social Semantics is Dr John Breslin, Senior Lecturer at NUI Galway. He has a strong international profile in the area of social media, both from an academic and industry perspective.

  • Community builder

    Co-founder of boards.ie, Ireland's largest indigenous social media website.

  • Author

    Co-author of The Social Semantic Web (Springer, 2009) and Social Semantic Web Mining (Morgan & Claypool, 2015).

  • Working group leader

    Vice-Chair of the IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing) Working Group 12.7 on Social Networking Semantics and Collective Intelligence.

  • Community member

    Steering Committee Member for the International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, and General Chair of ICWSM-12.

  • Semantic expert

    Creator of the SIOC Social Semantic Web framework used by hundreds of systems and on tens of thousands of websites.

  • Advisor

    Mentor for various community platform providers, including BuilderEngine and CrowdGather.

Where are we?

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