The University of Trento is the coordinator of the WeNet-Internet of Us project.
WeNet has already been named a Key Innovation by the European Commission Innovation Radar initiative, in the "Tech Ready” category.
The WeNet-Internet of us survey is part of the project's pilots, developed in two phases and involving seven universities among the consortium members.
The first phase, which is currently in action, is conducted through an online questionnaire, while the second will take place in November through an app called i-Log, developed by the University of Trento.
The starting point of our research is diversity, which is pervasive in our everyday life and is a great added value for those who recognize it and understand the benefits it brings.
We already benefit from diversity on a daily basis, when we see a doctor when we are sick, a plumber when we need to fix plumbing problems, an interpreter when we need someone with language skills, and so on.
The Internet simply made diversity available, transcending space and time. At the same time, however, this huge potential also creates concern, because we keep making contact with unknown diversities, that belong to cultures that are unknown to us. So, this great potential offered by the Internet can be worrying or even frightening.
Modern technology, including the most popular social networks, do not tackle this problem and are therefore unable to support, develop and maintain social relations with people, including strangers, with different geographical and cultural backgrounds. WeNet, “The Internet of us”, aims to solve this problem.
First of all, it will examine people's behaviour both online and in the real world to then model and understand diversity based on the observed behaviours.
WeNet will focus on a population sample of university students, as they are a very energetic group of people who are ready to make the most of the opportunities that will be made available by a new generation of social networks. To this end, in these days all students enrolled in an undergraduate or master's degree at UniTrento will receive an invitation to take a survey with this wording: Would you like to shape the next generation of services available at your university?
By answering the questions, the participants will help researchers identify new ways to improve diversity awareness. Interested students can also participate in the second phase of the project, in which 300 students will be randomly selected to be part of a paid research study that will further explore the subject of diversity.
To learn more visit: https://www.internetofus.eu/project/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMqBrS0Ps2cTFvLTx2qlxEQ
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WeNetProject
If you are interested in the project and would like to write a dissertation in social sciences, data science or IT, send an email to: UNITN [at] we-net.eu