Work Plan

One of the most important aspects of the SimWeb project is its strong interdisciplinary character. The fact that sociologists, computer scientists, and business professionals work together to define, analyse, and model social and economic aspects of the digital contents sector requires a strongly integrated project implementation. The Project Work Plan is divided into the following stages:

  • Participatory Design: We need to establish a common knowledge base among all participants in the project, to ensure a common understanding of previous work and results and to define common strategies for data collection and knowledge elicitation for the descriptive sector surveys.
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  • Sector Analyses: A series of in-depth analyses of the European online music and news industries will be undertaken to permit us to establish the significance and relative importance of the several factors, and determine the 'key' driving factors for both sample sectors.
  • Multi-Agent Models: The technology partners will, independently of the data analysis activities, develop reusable and scalable multi-agent model components. These components will then be used with the data and the insights gained by the sector analyses to build models that capture the essential dynamics of the retail digital music and online newspaper markets respectively.
  • Participatory Evaluation: The models produced in the previous stage will be evaluated with participants in the digital contents sector, allowing them to gain an improved understanding of the project's aims while commenting on the extent to which models help to achieve those aims.