A Semiotic-Based Approach for Search in Social Network Services

Search mechanisms in Social Network Services (SNSs) should take into account the meanings created, shared, and used by people through the use of the system. This paper investigates a new approach to develop search mechanisms more adequate for SNSs. SNSs represent an opportunity for people access to information in the Web. These systems allow individuals to constitute communities of common interests with wide cultural diversity, sharing information and vocabularies. The search mechanism proposed in this paper is grounded in Semantic Web technologies combined and articulated with Organizational Semiotics methods and artifacts. The authors illustrate a process to create the ontology and techniques to improve semantic search results in SNSs using Semantic Web Rule Language. The paper discusses the practical and technological results that could be achieved using the proposed approach.