10041 Executive Summary – Perspectives Workshop: Digital Social Networks

Abstract

The Perspective Workshop on “Digital Social Networks” held in between January 25th and 29th, 2010 at the research centre Schloss Dagstuhl focused on technological, socio-economical, and political aspects of digital social networks, and, more generally, digital social media. Digital social media give rise to users and communities to collaboratively generate and exchange content and to interact. They enable social computation, i.e. computations that involve both software and groups of people.  They are operated by specific software systems called social software and use information and communication technologies such as the Internet and Web technologies. Digital social media ease and strengthen social interactions by overcoming physical limitations in communication (like distance and synchronicity) and alleviating human limitations like the number of people with whom one can maintain relationships. Digital social media build, and/or rely upon, social networks that might be the primary purpose of the media.