Computer Terminology/Glossary S-T

Scraper: Automated computer scripts that parse the contents of web pages so it is useful as data. See also ‘spider’.

Search Engine: Facilities by which computer users can search for required information on online networks, notably the Internet and World Wide Web. Major providers like Google, Yahoo! and MSN collect data on searches for unspecified uses that are retained for unspecified periods of time.

Secondary analysis: Analysis of data conducted by those other than the original collectors of the data.

Secure Socket Layer: A communication protocol whose primary goal is to provide private and reliable communication between two computer applications.

Seed set: A set of Web pages purposively selected to satisfy a query. See also ‘scraper’ and ‘spider’.

Semantic web: The use of formal knowledge representation techniques to comment and annotate Web (or Grid) resources. Unlike the already familiar Web, in the Semantic Web, resources are commented and annotated explicitly to form expressive knowledge bases, enabling automation of various procedures in application to data resources. Autonomous computer programs (‘agents’) can access the content for selective retrieval and analysis. Key feature of the semantic web is the imposition of structure on data to facilitate automated processing.

Sensor studies: Research involving the collection of data from sensors applied to people or objects (‘tagging’) to track behavioural information, including transactions. Also called ‘remote sensor studies’.

Server Log File: An automated system recording network search terms and date and time of requests.

Server side: Computer resources such as programs or information that is not held on the user’s computer but on or from the server to which the computer is linked. See also ‘client side’.

SOAP: An XML-based protocol for exchanging structured information in a decentralized, distributed environment. See also ‘Extensible Markup Language’.

Social affordance: A feature of a system that enables a form of social interaction.

Social desirability effect: When research subjects provide responses that they think the researcher wants to hear or that they think put them in a good light, rather than their actual views or behaviour.

Social Network Analysis: Techniques for the analysis of social networks and their role in social behaviour. Not confined to, but greatly enhanced by, online information and resources.

Social shaping: A social science concept referring to the role that technology has in shaping society and social relations and the way that society and social relations affect the development and application of technologies.

Spam: Unwanted online communication, usually received via e-mail and generally containing advertising. Named after a 1970’s Monty Python TV sketch in which a restaurant offered only Spam, Spam and more Spam. Spam is a formed meat product sold in cans.

Spider: A special class of scraper that follows links between Web pages and collects information along the way. Data for spiders often comes from a seed set. See also ‘scraper’ and ‘seed set’.

Structured Query Language (‘SQL’): A standard language for inserting data into a database, selecting sub-sets, aggregating results and producing ‘reports’.

Text mining: Techniques employing computer applications to analyse large volumes of text in order to identify patterns, concordances (associations) and links between hitherto unrelated information sources in the public domain.

Tie: Relationship between nodes in a network. 

Triangulation: The use of different research methods in combination, originally to test for 'convergent validation' but now more often to enable a fuller, richer account of the phenomenon under study. A frequent combination is of one or more quantitative and one or more qualitative methods. Also called 'mixed methods', 'multiple methods' or 'multi-method'.
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