1 Introduction, Motivation and Research Question
Networks are a common concept, and can be observed in everyday life. These can be, for example social, biological or technological networks, and can represent different entities forming some kind of relationship with each other. In the social context, for instance, they can show the friendship connections existing between individuals (Pitas, 2015) or in the case of biological networks can capture the interwoven net of neurons in the brain (Dorogovtsev and Mendes, 2013). One particular technological network has made a tremendous impact on business and society in the last decades, which is the Internet network. The emergence of the Internet into the public sphere in 1993 (Shepherd, 2007) entailed many changes to several aspects of the life of individuals. Today’s Internet comprises a worldwide-spanning interconnected infrastructure, and is used by 3.8 billion people around the world (Statista, 2017a).
Prior to the existence of the Internet network, information needed either to be known or carefully sought from books, whilst today a vast stock of knowledge is only one click away.
Furthermore, before the Internet emerged, letters were the written communication medium of choice; nowadays, e-mails can be used, reaching the destined recipient almost instantaneously.
In 2015, around 205.6 billion e-mails were sent worldwide, and the number is expected to grow by five percent annually in the coming years (Radicati, 2015).
The Internet also changed the interaction of human beings in several more dimensions, such as the possibility of forming and maintaining friendships via social media websites. These kinds of websites exhibit tremendous usage statistics, with around 2.34 billion active users worldwide (Statista, 2017b). From a commercial perspective, changes are also apparent. Several services and industries depend fully on this technical infrastructure. E-commerce is a new business sector which emerged based upon the Internet infrastructure. The e-commerce sector is rapidly growing, reaching around $1.915 trillion of sales turnover in 2016 (eMarketer, 2016) with an increasing number of people browsing the Internet to shop online (Statista, 2017c). Some of the most important businesses with the highest market capitalization worldwide are online businesses, such as Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com and Facebook. All of these are completely dependent on the infrastructure the Internet provides (Gandel, 2016). These examples emphasize the modern importance of the Internet network for the personal and professional environment.
However, a complex infrastructure such as the Internet is susceptible to failures and deliberate
attacks, and can suffer from certain bottlenecks, impairing its ability to stay connected und
functional throughout. Several incidents such as natural disasters, power blackouts and
accidental misconfigurations have demonstrated the Internet’s vulnerability, causing a reduced
communication ability possibly affecting wide geographic areas. Due to the importance of the
Internet within business and society, this can have a tremendous negative impact. Although
research into the Internet has been a focus for some years, certain aspects are still not fully
understood due to the complex nature of the network. This thesis therefore strives to close
several research gaps by analyzing the Internet infrastructure, its application and its users from
various perspectives.
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The main topics of this dissertation can be classified into the classical three dimensions of information systems, consisting of the technological, managerial and organizational perspectives (Laudon and Laudon, 2014, p.18). The technological perspective comprises the technical infrastructure of information systems including hardware, software, data storage and network components. Technlogy enables a organization and their management to accomplish their pre-defined business goals. The selection of appropriate technology components is part of the managements’ responsibility and needs to be carried out carefully. By doing so, information technology enables the organization and its management to achieve financial stability through strategic business decisions which can be supported by information technology. The organizational dimension centers around the individuals who interact with information technology. Such individuals can be the organization as a whole or the individual people. The business is deeply interconnected with its information system structure causing a interwoven net of individuals, technology and the organization. By considering all these three dimensions, this thesis realizes a comprehensive understanding of all aspects of information systems in the selected areas.
Figure 1. Layer representation of the main topics considered in this dissertation. The numbers in brackets represent the relevant articles (see Section 3).
In addition to the general structure of the Internet network, selected applications in technology,
business and social media, which are based upon the Internet infrastructure, are the focus of
this work. Figure 1 presents the main topics of this dissertation in a thematic context related to
the three dimensions of information systems. The figure shows three different layers in the
center. The core of the layer chart depicts the technological aspect of information systems,
which constitutes the basis for all subsequent layers. The specific infrastructure in the case of
this dissertation is the Internet network; its structure and robustness will be investigated. In
addition to the Internet network in general, two different technological services are also the
focus of this work: cloud computing and the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Both services will be
investigated from a technological viewpoint. In the case of Bitcoin, the underlying network of
online payment transactions is explored, with the aim of understanding its general structure and
composition. In the case of cloud computing, an understanding of the connectedness of different
service providers to the Internet through analyzing their service availability is the goal.
3 On top of the Internet infrastructure, and therefore fully dependent on it, lies the management perspective. This layer focuses on the econometric perspective of the Internet. In this dissertation, the e-commerce sector is explored, and especially the understanding and prediction of the behavior of website visitors using clickstream data, with the aim of supporting managerial decision making and strengthening company success through improved decision making.
Following the technological and management perspectives, the analysis of aspects of the organizational perspective, focusing on the investigation of user behavior from various points of view, also forms part of this thesis. The outer layer of Figure 1 represents this dimension of information systems. In general, the two different use cases of social media and mobile devices are relevant, and in both cases, the understanding of users and their behavior is the focus. Social media platforms are based on the global Internet network, and mobile devices make it possible to access the Internet independently of location, causing an even more entangled and ubiquitously accessible communication network. These services therefore have a tremendous influence on the behavior of individuals.
In general, this dissertation aims to answer the following high-level research questions, each located at a different layer and from a different viewpoint:
RQ 1.1: How robust is the Internet infrastructure, both in general and when considering country-based characteristics?
RQ 1.2: What is the structure of the Bitcoin network?
RQ 1.3: How well are cloud service providers connected to the Internet network?
RQ 2: How can predictive modeling be used to estimate user behavior for e-commerce applications?
RQ 3.1: What are the gender differences in social media applications, and how do specific communities use social media platforms?
RQ 3.2: How does the ubiquity of smartphones affect individuals in personal and professional environments?
This dissertation uses a range of different methodological applications to answer the above research questions, as summarized in Figure 2. The main architectural concept of this dissertation are network-based structures. Graphs can represent these real-world networks. A graph is a mathematical notation whereby specific objects of interest, e.g. routers in the case of the Internet, or individuals in the case of social networks, form nodes which are connected via edges. Edges represent a certain interaction between two nodes, e.g. a data transfer in the case of the Internet, or an existing friendship between users of social media websites. These graphs can then be used to understand the specific phenomena and characteristics of each network. The methodological approach of graph analysis is utilized in research from the technological perspective and partly from the organizational perspective, in relation to social media analysis.
The second methodological direction utilized in this thesis is predictive modeling, applied to the management perspective in the e-commerce context. This is a method which uses as its basis either structured or non-structured data, in order to find relationships and patterns in the information provided. The relations in the data are detected and learned by a statistical model.
A huge variety of models exists, such as regression and classification algorithms, whose
application depends on the outcome required from the data. These methodological applications
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are relevant in the e-commerce context, since the anticipation of user behavior can help in making more informed business decisions and generating higher revenue for companies.
Other methods applied in this dissertation are comprehensive literature surveys, used to systematically work up the current state of research in a particular area, in connection with relevant scientific theories, including the analysis of gender differences in social media applications such as blogs, microblogs and online dating platforms. Furthermore, in the case of the research area of mobile devices, a mixed method design is applied which consists of varying compositions of methodologies such as surveys, observations and a quasi-experimental setting, in order to understand how smartphones affect personal relationships and the behavior of individuals.
Figure 2. Methodologies applied in the course of this dissertation. The numbers in brackets represent the relevant articles (see Section 3).
The structure of the thesis is as follows: the second chapter will explain the specific research
context for the thesis. This will be used to connect the topics included in this thesis at a higher
level, and to present them in their overall research context. The third chapter will briefly
summarize the papers submitted with this thesis. The fourth chapter concludes the first part of
this dissertation with a descriptive view of published and submitted papers, in terms of their
qualitative aspects with respect to three different rating systems.
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Im Dokument
Network Science – Applications in Technology, Business and Social Media
(Seite 17-21)