How can social networks ever become complex? Modelling the emergence of complex networks from local social exchanges

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Pujol, Josep M.; Flache, Andreas; Delgado, Jordi; Sangüesa, Ramon; Sanguessa, R.

2005-01-01

Small-world and power-law network structures have been prominently proposed as models of large networks. However, the assumptions of these models usually-lack sociological grounding. We present a computational model grounded in social exchange theory. Agents search attractive exchange partners in a

Localization of multilayer networks by optimized single-layer rewiring.

Science.gov (United States)

Jalan, Sarika; Pradhan, Priodyuti

2018-04-01

We study localization properties of principal eigenvectors (PEVs) of multilayer networks (MNs). Starting with a multilayer network corresponding to a delocalized PEV, we rewire the network edges using an optimization technique such that the PEV of the rewired multilayer network becomes more localized. The framework allows us to scrutinize structural and spectral properties of the networks at various localization points during the rewiring process. We show that rewiring only one layer is enough to attain a MN having a highly localized PEV. Our investigation reveals that a single edge rewiring of the optimized MN can lead to the complete delocalization of a highly localized PEV. This sensitivity in the localization behavior of PEVs is accompanied with the second largest eigenvalue lying very close to the largest one. This observation opens an avenue to gain a deeper insight into the origin of PEV localization of networks. Furthermore, analysis of multilayer networks constructed using real-world social and biological data shows that the localization properties of these real-world multilayer networks are in good agreement with the simulation results for the model multilayer network. This paper is relevant to applications that require understanding propagation of perturbation in multilayer networks.

Local communities obstruct global consensus: Naming game on multi-local-world networks

Science.gov (United States)

Lou, Yang; Chen, Guanrong; Fan, Zhengping; Xiang, Luna

2018-02-01

Community structure is essential for social communications, where individuals belonging to the same community are much more actively interacting and communicating with each other than those in different communities within the human society. Naming game, on the other hand, is a social communication model that simulates the process of learning a name of an object within a community of humans, where the individuals can generally reach global consensus asymptotically through iterative pair-wise conversations. The underlying network indicates the relationships among the individuals. In this paper, three typical topologies, namely random-graph, small-world and scale-free networks, are employed, which are embedded with the multi-local-world community structure, to study the naming game. Simulations show that (1) the convergence process to global consensus is getting slower as the community structure becomes more prominent, and eventually might fail; (2) if the inter-community connections are sufficiently dense, neither the number nor the size of the communities affects the convergence process; and (3) for different topologies with the same (or similar) average node-degree, local clustering of individuals obstruct or prohibit global consensus to take place. The results reveal the role of local communities in a global naming game in social network studies.

Connecting Social Networks with Ecosystem Services for Watershed Governance: a Social-Ecological Network Perspective Highlights the Critical Role of Bridging Organizations

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kaitlyn J. Rathwell

2012-06-01

Full Text Available In many densely settled agricultural watersheds, water quality is a point of conflict between amenity and agricultural activities because of the varied demands and impacts on shared water resources. Successful governance of these watersheds requires coordination among different activities. Recent research has highlighted the role that social networks between management entities can play to facilitate cross-scale interaction in watershed governance. For example, bridging organizations can be positioned in social networks to bridge local initiatives done by single municipalities across whole watersheds. To better understand the role of social networks in social-ecological system dynamics, we combine a social network analysis of the water quality management networks held by local governments with a social-ecological analysis of variation in water management and ecosystem services across the Montérégie, an agricultural landscape near Montréal, Québec, Canada. We analyze municipal water management networks by using one-mode networks to represent direct collaboration between municipalities, and two-mode networks to capture how bridging organizations indirectly connect municipalities. We find that municipalities do not collaborate directly with one another but instead are connected via bridging organizations that span the water quality management network. We also discovered that more connected municipalities engaged in more water management activities. However, bridging organizations preferentially connected with municipalities that used more tourism related ecosystem services rather than those that used more agricultural ecosystem services. Many agricultural municipalities were relatively isolated, despite being the main producers of water quality problems. In combination, these findings suggest that further strengthening the water management network in the Montérégie will contribute to improving water quality in the region. However, such

Sustainability and collapse in a coevolutionary model of local resource stocks and behavioral patterns on a social network

Science.gov (United States)

Wiedermann, Marc; Donges, Jonathan F.; Heitzig, Jobst; Kurths, Jürgen

2014-05-01

When investigating the causes and consequences of global change, the collective behavior of human beings is considered as having a considerable impact on natural systems. In our work, we propose a conceptual coevolutionary model simulating the dynamics of local renewable resources in interaction with simplistic societal agents exploiting those resources. The society is represented by a social network on which social traits may be transmitted between agents. These traits themselves induce a certain rate of exploitation of the resource, leading either to its depletion or sustainable existence. Traits are exchanged probabilistically according to their instantaneous individual payoff, and hence this process depends on the status of the natural resource. At the same time agents may adaptively restructure their set of acquaintances. Connections with agents having a different trait may be broken while new connections with agents of the same trait are established. We investigate which choices of social parameters, like the frequency of social interaction, rationality and rate of social network adaptation, cause the system to end in a sustainable state and, hence, what can be done to avoid a collapse of the entire system. The importance and influence of the social network structure is analyzed by the variation of link-densities in the underlying network topology and shows significant influence on the expected outcome of the model. For a static network with no adaptation we find a robust phase transition between the two different regimes, sustainable and non-sustainable, which co-exist in parameter space. High connectivity within the social network, e.g., high link-densities, in combination with a fast rate of social learning lead to a likely collapse of the entire co-evolutionary system, whereas slow learning and small network connectivity very likely result in the sustainable existence of the natural resources. Collapse may be avoided by an intelligent rewiring, e

Urbanism, Neighborhood Context, and Social Networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Cornwell, Erin York; Behler, Rachel L

2015-09-01

Theories of urbanism suggest that the urban context erodes individuals' strong social ties with friends and family. Recent research has narrowed focus to the neighborhood context, emphasizing how localized structural disadvantage affects community-level cohesion and social capital. In this paper, we argue that neighborhood context also shapes social ties with friends and family- particularly for community-dwelling seniors. We hypothesize that neighborhood disadvantage, residential instability, and disorder restrict residents' abilities to cultivate close relationships with neighbors and non-neighbor friends and family. Using data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), we find that older adults who live in disadvantaged neighborhoods have smaller social networks. Neighborhood disadvantage is also associated with less close network ties and less frequent interaction - but only among men. Furthermore, residents of disordered neighborhoods have smaller networks and weaker ties. We urge scholars to pay greater attention to how neighborhood context contributes to disparities in network-based access to resources.

Competing opinion diffusion on social networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Hu, Haibo

2017-11-01

Opinion competition is a common phenomenon in real life, such as with opinions on controversial issues or political candidates; however, modelling this competition remains largely unexplored. To bridge this gap, we propose a model of competing opinion diffusion on social networks taking into account degree-dependent fitness or persuasiveness. We study the combined influence of social networks, individual fitnesses and attributes, as well as mass media on people's opinions, and find that both social networks and mass media act as amplifiers in opinion diffusion, the amplifying effect of which can be quantitatively characterized. We analytically obtain the probability that each opinion will ultimately pervade the whole society when there are no committed people in networks, and the final proportion of each opinion at the steady state when there are committed people in networks. The results of numerical simulations show good agreement with those obtained through an analytical approach. This study provides insight into the collective influence of individual attributes, local social networks and global media on opinion diffusion, and contributes to a comprehensive understanding of competing diffusion behaviours in the real world.

Implementation of SNS Model for Intrusion Prevention in Wireless Local Area Network

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Isah, Abdullahi

The thesis has proposed and implemented a so-called SNS (Social network security) model for intrusion prevention in the Wireless Local Area Network of an organization. An experimental design was used to implement and test the model at a university in Nigeria.......The thesis has proposed and implemented a so-called SNS (Social network security) model for intrusion prevention in the Wireless Local Area Network of an organization. An experimental design was used to implement and test the model at a university in Nigeria....

Local network assessment

Science.gov (United States)

Glen, D. V.

1985-04-01

Local networks, related standards activities of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers the American National Standards Institute and other elements are presented. These elements include: (1) technology choices such as topology, transmission media, and access protocols; (2) descriptions of standards for the 802 local area networks (LAN's); high speed local networks (HSLN's) and military specification local networks; and (3) intra- and internetworking using bridges and gateways with protocols Interconnection (OSI) reference model. The convergence of LAN/PBX technology is also described.

Enabling Controlling Complex Networks with Local Topological Information.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Guoqi; Deng, Lei; Xiao, Gaoxi; Tang, Pei; Wen, Changyun; Hu, Wuhua; Pei, Jing; Shi, Luping; Stanley, H Eugene

2018-03-15

Complex networks characterize the nature of internal/external interactions in real-world systems including social, economic, biological, ecological, and technological networks. Two issues keep as obstacles to fulfilling control of large-scale networks: structural controllability which describes the ability to guide a dynamical system from any initial state to any desired final state in finite time, with a suitable choice of inputs; and optimal control, which is a typical control approach to minimize the cost for driving the network to a predefined state with a given number of control inputs. For large complex networks without global information of network topology, both problems remain essentially open. Here we combine graph theory and control theory for tackling the two problems in one go, using only local network topology information. For the structural controllability problem, a distributed local-game matching method is proposed, where every node plays a simple Bayesian game with local information and local interactions with adjacent nodes, ensuring a suboptimal solution at a linear complexity. Starring from any structural controllability solution, a minimizing longest control path method can efficiently reach a good solution for the optimal control in large networks. Our results provide solutions for distributed complex network control and demonstrate a way to link the structural controllability and optimal control together.

Social network of an internationally connected nurse leader.

Science.gov (United States)

Benton, David

2016-03-01

Over the past decade, there has been a proliferation of social media sites offering the opportunity for colleagues to connect with each other locally, nationally and internationally. Meanwhile, nurses have been increasingly using social network analytical techniques to look at team functioning and communication pathways. This article uses the author's LinkedIn social network to illustrate how analysis can offer insights into the connections, and how the results can be used to professional advantage.

Identity Practices of Multilingual Writers in Social Networking Spaces

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Hsin-I

2013-01-01

This study examines the literacy practices of two multilingual writers in social networking communities. The findings show that the multilingual writers explored and reappropriated symbolic resources afforded by the social networking site as they aligned themselves with particular collective and personal identities at local and global levels.…

From Offline Social Networks to Online Social Networks: Changes in Entrepreneurship

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yang SONG

2015-01-01

Full Text Available The paper reviewed studies of entrepreneurship based on the emergency of online social networks. Similar to offline social networks, entrepreneurs’ online social networks have their own unique characteristics. We first reviewed the offline network based research on entrepreneurship. Then we reviewed the studies of entrepreneurship in the context of online social networks including those focusing on topics of network structures and network ties. We highlighted online network communities based on the data collected from LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Our research implies that both researcher and entrepreneurs are facing new opportunities due to the emergence of online social networks.

Promoting Social Network Awareness: A Social Network Monitoring System

Science.gov (United States)

Cadima, Rita; Ferreira, Carlos; Monguet, Josep; Ojeda, Jordi; Fernandez, Joaquin

2010-01-01

To increase communication and collaboration opportunities, members of a community must be aware of the social networks that exist within that community. This paper describes a social network monitoring system--the KIWI system--that enables users to register their interactions and visualize their social networks. The system was implemented in a…

Harnessing social networks for promoting adoption of energy technologies in the domestic sector

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bale, Catherine S.E.; McCullen, Nicholas J.; Foxon, Timothy J.; Rucklidge, Alastair M.; Gale, William F.

2013-01-01

This paper presents results from modelling work investigating the effects of social networks on the adoption of energy technologies in the domestic sector. This work concerns ideas on social network interventions which have been successfully applied in other domains but which have seldom been applied to energy policy questions. We employ a dynamical multi-parameter network model where households are represented as nodes on a network for which the uptake of technologies is influenced by both personal benefit and social influences. This is applied to demonstrate the usefulness of this type of model in assessing the likely success of different roll-out strategies that a local authority could pursue in promoting the uptake of domestic energy technologies. Local authorities can play a key role in the retrofit of energy-efficiency and low-carbon energy-generation technologies in order to realise carbon reductions and alleviate fuel poverty. Scenarios are modelled for different local authority interventions that target network interactions and uptake threshold effects, and the results provide insights for policy. The potential for the use of this type of modelling in understanding the adoption of energy innovations in the domestic sector and designing local-level interventions is demonstrated. - Highlights: • We model energy-technology adoption of households connected on a social network. • Adoption depends on both personal and social benefits to the household. • We investigate interventions that a local authority could take to increase uptake. • Increased uptake results from both threshold and network intervention scenarios. • Insights should be incorporated into design of local-level domestic interventions

Professional social networking.

Science.gov (United States)

Rowley, Robert D

2014-12-01

We review the current state of social communication between healthcare professionals, the role of consumer social networking, and some emerging technologies to address the gaps. In particular, the review covers (1) the current state of loose social networking for continuing medical education (CME) and other broadcast information dissemination; (2) social networking for business promotion; (3) social networking for peer collaboration, including simple communication as well as more robust data-centered collaboration around patient care; and (4) engaging patients on social platforms, including integrating consumer-originated data into the mix of healthcare data. We will see how, as the nature of healthcare delivery moves from the institution-centric way of tradition to a more social and networked ambulatory pattern that we see emerging today, the nature of health IT has also moved from enterprise-centric systems to more socially networked, cloud-based options.

Social entrepreneurship and social networks

OpenAIRE

Dufays, Frédéric

2013-01-01

In this presentation, we argue that the sociology of social networks may provide interesting insights with regard to the emergence of social entrepreneurship both at micro and macro levels. There have already been several calls for research on social networks in the context of social entrepreneurship (Certo & Miller 2008; Gedajlovic, et al. 2013; Haugh 2007; Mair & Marti 2006; Short, et al. 2009). These calls often address the differences in structure and effects of social networks in a socia...

Emergence of communities and diversity in social networks

OpenAIRE

Han, Xiao; Cao, Shinan; Shen, Zhesi; Zhang, Boyu; Wang, Wen-Xu; Cressman, Ross; Stanley, H. Eugene

2017-01-01

Understanding how communities emerge is a fundamental problem in social and economic systems. Here, we experimentally explore the emergence of communities in social networks, using the ultimatum game as a paradigm for capturing individual interactions. We find the emergence of diverse communities in static networks is the result of the local interaction between responders with inherent heterogeneity and rational proposers in which the former act as community leaders. In contrast, communities ...

Social interactions elicit rapid shifts in functional connectivity in the social decision-making network of zebrafish.

Science.gov (United States)

Teles, Magda C; Almeida, Olinda; Lopes, João S; Oliveira, Rui F

2015-10-07

According to the social decision-making (SDM) network hypothesis, SDM is encoded in a network of forebrain and midbrain structures in a distributed and dynamic fashion, such that the expression of a given social behaviour is better reflected by the overall profile of activation across the different loci rather than by the activity of a single node. This proposal has the implicit assumption that SDM relies on integration across brain regions, rather than on regional specialization. Here we tested the occurrence of functional localization and of functional connectivity in the SDM network. For this purpose we used zebrafish to map different social behaviour states into patterns of neuronal activity, as indicated by the expression of the immediate early genes c-fos and egr-1, across the SDM network. The results did not support functional localization, as some loci had similar patterns of activity associated with different social behaviour states, and showed socially driven changes in functional connectivity. Thus, this study provides functional support to the SDM network hypothesis and suggests that the neural context in which a given node of the network is operating (i.e. the state of its interconnected areas) is central to its functional relevance. © 2015 The Author(s).

EMERGENCE OF THE SOCIAL CONSUMER- THE IMPACT OF PERSONALISATION, LOCALIZATION AND SOCIAL COLLABORATION ON CONSUMERISM

OpenAIRE

TATJANA PETKOVSKA MIRCHEVSKA; SONJA MARKOVA

2011-01-01

Social media affects human behavior and culture through personalization, localization, advocacy, social collaboration. New form of virtual social interaction has emerged: Social Consumerism. Consumer brands are flocking to social networks. Traditional consumer purchase funnel no longer reflects the consumer purchase behavior. A new more sophisticated and more complicated than traditional funnel has emerged. This new approach, called the consumer decision journey, places greater emphasis on lo...

Rapid innovation diffusion in social networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Kreindler, Gabriel E; Young, H Peyton

2014-07-22

Social and technological innovations often spread through social networks as people respond to what their neighbors are doing. Previous research has identified specific network structures, such as local clustering, that promote rapid diffusion. Here we derive bounds that are independent of network structure and size, such that diffusion is fast whenever the payoff gain from the innovation is sufficiently high and the agents' responses are sufficiently noisy. We also provide a simple method for computing an upper bound on the expected time it takes for the innovation to become established in any finite network. For example, if agents choose log-linear responses to what their neighbors are doing, it takes on average less than 80 revision periods for the innovation to diffuse widely in any network, provided that the error rate is at least 5% and the payoff gain (relative to the status quo) is at least 150%. Qualitatively similar results hold for other smoothed best-response functions and populations that experience heterogeneous payoff shocks.

A comprehensive multi-local-world model for complex networks

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fan Zhengping; Chen Guanrong; Zhang Yunong

2009-01-01

The nodes in a community within a network are much more connected to each other than to the others outside the community in the same network. This phenomenon has been commonly observed from many real-world networks, ranging from social to biological even to technical networks. Meanwhile, the number of communities in some real-world networks, such as the Internet and most social networks, are evolving with time. To model this kind of networks, the present Letter proposes a multi-local-world (MLW) model to capture and describe their essential topological properties. Based on the mean-field theory, the degree distribution of this model is obtained analytically, showing that the generated network has a novel topological feature as being not completely random nor completely scale-free but behaving somewhere between them. As a typical application, the MLW model is applied to characterize the Internet against some other models such as the BA, GBA, Fitness and HOT models, demonstrating the superiority of the new model.

SSH & the City. A Network Approach for Tracing the Societal Contribution of the Social Sciences and Humanities for Local Development

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Robinson-Garcia, N.; Van Leeuwen, T.; Rafols, I.

2016-07-01

Current evaluation frameworks in research policy were designed to address: 1) life and natural sciences, 2) global research communities, and; 3) scientific impact. This is problematic, as they do not adapt well to SSH scholarship, to local interests, or to consider broader societal impacts. This paper discusses three different evaluation frameworks and proposes a methodology to operationalize them and capture societal interactions between social sciences and humanities (SSH) researchers and their local context. To capture such interactions, we propose the use of social media and web-link analysis to identify interactions between academics and local stakeholders. We consider that the power of these tools is not so much on understanding their meaning as ‘acts’ to develop impact or visibility metrics whenever a mention to a research article is made, but as proxies for personal interactions. We offer some examples of the expected social networks we aim at developing for two Spanish cities: Granada and Valencia. (Author)

Social network data analytics

CERN Document Server

Aggarwal, Charu C

2011-01-01

Social network analysis applications have experienced tremendous advances within the last few years due in part to increasing trends towards users interacting with each other on the internet. Social networks are organized as graphs, and the data on social networks takes on the form of massive streams, which are mined for a variety of purposes. Social Network Data Analytics covers an important niche in the social network analytics field. This edited volume, contributed by prominent researchers in this field, presents a wide selection of topics on social network data mining such as Structural Pr

Local election blogs: Networking among the political elite

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bock Segaard, Signe; Agger Nielsen, Jeppe

2013-01-01

This article explores the role of social media (essentially blogs) in the 2011 Norwegian local election campaigns. We commence by developing a framework for investigating political communication using the social media that conceptualises the horizontal and vertical conversation along two dimensions...... in the local election campaign. While candidates say they want to connect with the electorate, in practice they are networking with each other. Our findings are discussed in light of the institutional setting in which the blogging take place, and the specific social media under investigation.......: participants and interaction. Next, we apply our framework in a case study of election blogs in twelve Norwegian municipalities using multiple data sources. In contrast to the democratic vision of social media, our analysis demonstrates that election blogs are primarily used by those who are politically active...

Social medicine and international expert networks in Latin America, 1930-1945.

Science.gov (United States)

Carter, Eric D

2018-01-03

This paper examines the international networks that influenced ideas and policy in social medicine in the 1930s and 1940s in Latin America, focusing on institutional networks organised by the League of Nations Health Organization, the International Labour Organization, and the Pan-American Sanitary Bureau. After examining the architecture of these networks, this paper traces their influence on social and health policy in two policy domains: social security and nutrition. Closer scrutiny of a series of international conferences and local media accounts of them reveals that international networks were not just 'conveyor belts' for policy ideas from the industrialised countries of the US and Europe into Latin America; rather, there was often contentious debate over the relevance and appropriateness of health and social policy models in the Latin American context. Recognition of difference between Latin America and the global economic core regions was a key impetus for seeking 'national solutions to national problems' in countries like Argentina and Chile, even as integration into these networks provided progressive doctors, scientists, and other intellectuals important international support for local political reforms.

A framework for online social networking features

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mohsen Shafiei Nikabadi

2014-06-01

Full Text Available Social networks form a basis for maintaining social contacts, finding users with common interests, creating local content and sharing information. Recently networks have created a fundamental framework for analyzing and modeling the complex systems. Users' behavior studies and evaluates the system performance and leads to better planning and implementation of advertising policies on the web sites. Therefore, this study offers a framework for online social networks' characteristics. In terms of objective, this survey is practical descriptive. Sampling has been done among 384 of graduate students who have good experiences of membership in online social network. Confirmatory factor analysis is used to evaluate the validity of variables in research model. Characteristics of online social networks are defined based on six components and framework's indexes are analyzed through factor analysis. The reliability is calculated separately for each dimension and since they are all above 0.7, the reliability of the study can be confirmed. According to our research results, in terms of size, the number of people who apply for membership in various online social networking is an important index. In terms of individual preference to connect with, people who are relative play essential role in social network development. In terms of homogeneity variable, the number of people who visit their friends’ pages is important for measuring frequency variable. In terms of frequency, the use of entertainment and recreation services is more important index. In terms of proximity, being in the same city is a more important index and index of creating a sense of belonging and confidence is more important for measuring reciprocity variable.

Stable configurations in social networks

Science.gov (United States)

Bronski, Jared C.; DeVille, Lee; Ferguson, Timothy; Livesay, Michael

2018-06-01

We present and analyze a model of opinion formation on an arbitrary network whose dynamics comes from a global energy function. We study the global and local minimizers of this energy, which we call stable opinion configurations, and describe the global minimizers under certain assumptions on the friendship graph. We show a surprising result that the number of stable configurations is not necessarily monotone in the strength of connection in the social network, i.e. the model sometimes supports more stable configurations when the interpersonal connections are made stronger.

Identifying changes in the support networks of end-of-life carers using social network analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Leonard, Rosemary; Horsfall, Debbie; Noonan, Kerrie

2015-06-01

End-of-life caring is often associated with reduced social networks for both the dying person and for the carer. However, those adopting a community participation and development approach, see the potential for the expansion and strengthening of networks. This paper uses Knox, Savage and Harvey's definitions of three generations social network analysis to analyse the caring networks of people with a terminal illness who are being cared for at home and identifies changes in these caring networks that occurred over the period of caring. Participatory network mapping of initial and current networks was used in nine focus groups. The analysis used key concepts from social network analysis (size, density, transitivity, betweenness and local clustering) together with qualitative analyses of the group's reflections on the maps. The results showed an increase in the size of the networks and that ties between the original members of the network strengthened. The qualitative data revealed the importance between core and peripheral network members and the diverse contributions of the network members. The research supports the value of third generation social network analysis and the potential for end-of-life caring to build social capital. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

Global efficiency of local immunization on complex networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Hébert-Dufresne, Laurent; Allard, Antoine; Young, Jean-Gabriel; Dubé, Louis J

2013-01-01

Epidemics occur in all shapes and forms: infections propagating in our sparse sexual networks, rumours and diseases spreading through our much denser social interactions, or viruses circulating on the Internet. With the advent of large databases and efficient analysis algorithms, these processes can be better predicted and controlled. In this study, we use different characteristics of network organization to identify the influential spreaders in 17 empirical networks of diverse nature using 2 epidemic models. We find that a judicious choice of local measures, based either on the network's connectivity at a microscopic scale or on its community structure at a mesoscopic scale, compares favorably to global measures, such as betweenness centrality, in terms of efficiency, practicality and robustness. We also develop an analytical framework that highlights a transition in the characteristic scale of different epidemic regimes. This allows to decide which local measure should govern immunization in a given scenario.

Global efficiency of local immunization on complex networks

Science.gov (United States)

Hébert-Dufresne, Laurent; Allard, Antoine; Young, Jean-Gabriel; Dubé, Louis J.

2013-07-01

Epidemics occur in all shapes and forms: infections propagating in our sparse sexual networks, rumours and diseases spreading through our much denser social interactions, or viruses circulating on the Internet. With the advent of large databases and efficient analysis algorithms, these processes can be better predicted and controlled. In this study, we use different characteristics of network organization to identify the influential spreaders in 17 empirical networks of diverse nature using 2 epidemic models. We find that a judicious choice of local measures, based either on the network's connectivity at a microscopic scale or on its community structure at a mesoscopic scale, compares favorably to global measures, such as betweenness centrality, in terms of efficiency, practicality and robustness. We also develop an analytical framework that highlights a transition in the characteristic scale of different epidemic regimes. This allows to decide which local measure should govern immunization in a given scenario.

Social networks and spreading of epidemics

Science.gov (United States)

Trimper, Steffen; Zheng, Dafang; Brandau, Marian

2004-05-01

Epidemiological processes are studied within a recently proposed social network model using the susceptible-infected-refractory dynamics (SIR) of an epidemic. Within the network model, a population of individuals may be characterized by H independent hierarchies or dimensions, each of which consists of groupings of individuals into layers of subgroups. Detailed numerical simulations reveals that for H > 1, the global spreading results regardless of the degree of homophily α of the individuals forming a social circle. For H = 1, a transition from a global to a local spread occurs as the population becomes decomposed into increasingly homophilous groups. Multiple dimensions in classifying individuals (nodes) thus make a society (computer network) highly susceptible to large scale outbreaks of infectious diseases (viruses). The SIR-model can be extended by the inclusion of waiting times resulting in modified distribution function of the recovered.

Introducing serendipity in a social network model of knowledge diffusion

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Cremonini, Marco

2016-01-01

Highlights: • Serendipity as a control mechanism for knowledge diffusion in social network. • Local communication enhanced in the periphery of a network. • Prevalence of hub nodes in the network core mitigated. • Potential disruptive effect on network formation of uncontrolled serendipity. - Abstract: In this paper, we study serendipity as a possible strategy to control the behavior of an agent-based network model of knowledge diffusion. The idea of considering serendipity in a strategic way has been first explored in Network Learning and Information Seeking studies. After presenting the major contributions of serendipity studies to digital environments, we discuss the extension to our model: Agents are enriched with random topics for establishing new communication according to different strategies. The results show how important network properties could be influenced, like reducing the prevalence of hubs in the network’s core and increasing local communication in the periphery, similar to the effects of more traditional self-organization methods. Therefore, from this initial study, when serendipity is opportunistically directed, it appears to behave as an effective and applicable approach to social network control.

Private Sharing of User Location over Online Social Networks

OpenAIRE

Freudiger, Julien; Neu, Raoul; Hubaux, Jean-Pierre

2010-01-01

Online social networks increasingly allow mobile users to share their location with their friends. Much to the detriment of users’ privacy, this also means that social network operators collect users’ lo- cation. Similarly, third parties can learn users’ location from localization and location visualization services. Ideally, third-parties should not be given complete access to users’ location. To protect location privacy, we design and implement a platform-independent solution for users to s...

Social networks

CERN Document Server

Etaner-Uyar, A Sima

2014-01-01

The present volume provides a comprehensive resource for practitioners and researchers alike-both those new to the field as well as those who already have some experience. The work covers Social Network Analysis theory and methods with a focus on current applications and case studies applied in various domains such as mobile networks, security, machine learning and health. With the increasing popularity of Web 2.0, social media has become a widely used communication platform. Parallel to this development, Social Network Analysis gained in importance as a research field, while opening up many

Social cognitive radio networks

CERN Document Server

Chen, Xu

2015-01-01

This brief presents research results on social cognitive radio networks, a transformational and innovative networking paradigm that promotes the nexus between social interactions and cognitive radio networks. Along with a review of the research literature, the text examines the key motivation and challenges of social cognitive radio network design. Three socially inspired distributed spectrum sharing mechanisms are introduced: adaptive channel recommendation mechanism, imitation-based social spectrum sharing mechanism, and evolutionarily stable spectrum access mechanism. The brief concludes with a discussion of future research directions which ascertains that exploiting social interactions for distributed spectrum sharing will advance the state-of-the-art of cognitive radio network design, spur a new line of thinking for future wireless networks, and enable novel wireless service and applications.

Collective learning for the emergence of social norms in networked multiagent systems.

Science.gov (United States)

Yu, Chao; Zhang, Minjie; Ren, Fenghui

2014-12-01

Social norms such as social rules and conventions play a pivotal role in sustaining system order by regulating and controlling individual behaviors toward a global consensus in large-scale distributed systems. Systematic studies of efficient mechanisms that can facilitate the emergence of social norms enable us to build and design robust distributed systems, such as electronic institutions and norm-governed sensor networks. This paper studies the emergence of social norms via learning from repeated local interactions in networked multiagent systems. A collective learning framework, which imitates the opinion aggregation process in human decision making, is proposed to study the impact of agent local collective behaviors on the emergence of social norms in a number of different situations. In the framework, each agent interacts repeatedly with all of its neighbors. At each step, an agent first takes a best-response action toward each of its neighbors and then combines all of these actions into a final action using ensemble learning methods. Extensive experiments are carried out to evaluate the framework with respect to different network topologies, learning strategies, numbers of actions, influences of nonlearning agents, and so on. Experimental results reveal some significant insights into the manipulation and control of norm emergence in networked multiagent systems achieved through local collective behaviors.

EMERGENCE OF THE SOCIAL CONSUMER- THE IMPACT OF PERSONALISATION, LOCALIZATION AND SOCIAL COLLABORATION ON CONSUMERISM

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

TATJANA PETKOVSKA MIRCHEVSKA

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Social media affects human behavior and culture through personalization, localization, advocacy, social collaboration. New form of virtual social interaction has emerged: Social Consumerism. Consumer brands are flocking to social networks. Traditional consumer purchase funnel no longer reflects the consumer purchase behavior. A new more sophisticated and more complicated than traditional funnel has emerged. This new approach, called the consumer decision journey, places greater emphasis on loyalty and advocacy and better reflects the dynamics of today’s market influenced by social media. As the online world continues to evolve understanding how to merge e-commerce with social media is critical for retail success. “Social commerce” integrates new media, via user generated content platforms and social networking features, directly onto commerce sites. By building vibrant communities that address the passion of retailer’s core audience, and spreading passion to larger social web, retailers will attract loyal and engaged customers, and will achieve better business results.

Social Networks and the Environment

OpenAIRE

Julio Videras

2013-01-01

This review discusses empirical research on social networks and the environment; it summarizes findings from representative studies and the conceptual frameworks social scientists use to examine the role of social networks. The article presents basic concepts in social network analysis, summarizes common challenges of empirical research on social networks, and outlines areas for future research. Finally, the article discusses the normative and positive meanings of social networks.

Model of community emergence in weighted social networks

Science.gov (United States)

Kumpula, J. M.; Onnela, J.-P.; Saramäki, J.; Kertész, J.; Kaski, K.

2009-04-01

Over the years network theory has proven to be rapidly expanding methodology to investigate various complex systems and it has turned out to give quite unparalleled insight to their structure, function, and response through data analysis, modeling, and simulation. For social systems in particular the network approach has empirically revealed a modular structure due to interplay between the network topology and link weights between network nodes or individuals. This inspired us to develop a simple network model that could catch some salient features of mesoscopic community and macroscopic topology formation during network evolution. Our model is based on two fundamental mechanisms of network sociology for individuals to find new friends, namely cyclic closure and focal closure, which are mimicked by local search-link-reinforcement and random global attachment mechanisms, respectively. In addition we included to the model a node deletion mechanism by removing all its links simultaneously, which corresponds for an individual to depart from the network. Here we describe in detail the implementation of our model algorithm, which was found to be computationally efficient and produce many empirically observed features of large-scale social networks. Thus this model opens a new perspective for studying such collective social phenomena as spreading, structure formation, and evolutionary processes.

Local dependency in networks

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Kudĕlka Miloš

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Many real world data and processes have a network structure and can usefully be represented as graphs. Network analysis focuses on the relations among the nodes exploring the properties of each network. We introduce a method for measuring the strength of the relationship between two nodes of a network and for their ranking. This method is applicable to all kinds of networks, including directed and weighted networks. The approach extracts dependency relations among the network’s nodes from the structure in local surroundings of individual nodes. For the tasks we deal with in this article, the key technical parameter is locality. Since only the surroundings of the examined nodes are used in computations, there is no need to analyze the entire network. This allows the application of our approach in the area of large-scale networks. We present several experiments using small networks as well as large-scale artificial and real world networks. The results of the experiments show high effectiveness due to the locality of our approach and also high quality node ranking comparable to PageRank.

The Algorithm of Link Prediction on Social Network

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Liyan Dong

2013-01-01

Full Text Available At present, most link prediction algorithms are based on the similarity between two entities. Social network topology information is one of the main sources to design the similarity function between entities. But the existing link prediction algorithms do not apply the network topology information sufficiently. For lack of traditional link prediction algorithms, we propose two improved algorithms: CNGF algorithm based on local information and KatzGF algorithm based on global information network. For the defect of the stationary of social network, we also provide the link prediction algorithm based on nodes multiple attributes information. Finally, we verified these algorithms on DBLP data set, and the experimental results show that the performance of the improved algorithm is superior to that of the traditional link prediction algorithm.

Build Locally, Link Globally: The Social Forum Process in Italy

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Donatella della Porta

2015-08-01

Full Text Available Considered an innovation because of its capacity to develop transnational processes, the World Social Forum however also has strong local roots as well as effects on organizational models and collective identities at the domestic level. Focusing on the Italian case, this article shows how local social forums, as arenas for exchanges of ideas, played a cognitive role in the import, but also the translation of new ideas, as well as helping the emergence of dense network structures and tolerant identities. The first section of the article examines how local social forums contributed to innovation in the organizational formulas of the Global Justice Movement—considering both structure (organizations and process (methodologies aspects—through the development of different, more participatory conceptions of internal decision making. It then addresses the innovations in the definition of collective identities, stressing the linkages of local struggles and global framing as well as the development of a cross-issue discourse around an anti-neoliberal frame. The final section will discuss the contribution of local social forums to contemporary social movements, stressing the role of these new arenas for the cross-fertilization among different movement families and spreading a method of working together that becomes part of the repertoire of action of local social movement organizations. The empirical research consists mainly of in-depth interviews and focus groups with activists from social movement organizations which were involved in local social forums.

Relationship between Social Networks Adoption and Social Intelligence

Science.gov (United States)

Gunduz, Semseddin

2017-01-01

The purpose of this study was to set forth the relationship between the individuals' states to adopt social networks and social intelligence and analyze both concepts according to various variables. Research data were collected from 1145 social network users in the online media by using the Adoption of Social Network Scale and Social Intelligence…

The geospatial characteristics of a social movement communication network.

Science.gov (United States)

Conover, Michael D; Davis, Clayton; Ferrara, Emilio; McKelvey, Karissa; Menczer, Filippo; Flammini, Alessandro

2013-01-01

Social movements rely in large measure on networked communication technologies to organize and disseminate information relating to the movements' objectives. In this work we seek to understand how the goals and needs of a protest movement are reflected in the geographic patterns of its communication network, and how these patterns differ from those of stable political communication. To this end, we examine an online communication network reconstructed from over 600,000 tweets from a thirty-six week period covering the birth and maturation of the American anticapitalist movement, Occupy Wall Street. We find that, compared to a network of stable domestic political communication, the Occupy Wall Street network exhibits higher levels of locality and a hub and spoke structure, in which the majority of non-local attention is allocated to high-profile locations such as New York, California, and Washington D.C. Moreover, we observe that information flows across state boundaries are more likely to contain framing language and references to the media, while communication among individuals in the same state is more likely to reference protest action and specific places and times. Tying these results to social movement theory, we propose that these features reflect the movement's efforts to mobilize resources at the local level and to develop narrative frames that reinforce collective purpose at the national level.

SOCIAL NETWORK EFFECTS ON ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP

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Fatma CAN

2015-06-01

Full Text Available The main objective of the study was to obtain information about social network variables in order to predict the relational commitment of married individuals and people having dating relationships. For this purpose, social network analysis has been carried out on 134 people having dating relationship and 154 married individuals and then Relationship Stability Scale, Subjective Norm Scale and Social Network Feature Survey prepared by the researcher were used. The results indicated that the approval of the closest social network member and the level of enjoyment of each other’s social network members had the best predictive value for relationship satisfaction and the investment to the relationship. The results also demonstrated that, approval of the social network had a negative impact on the level of the quality of alternatives and it showed that social networks were seen as a barrier function to have alternative relationships. Furthermore, by dividing social network members into two groups, for the dating group, the approval of the social network was the most significant variable for commitment but in the married group, the need for social network approval was not an important criteria because of having their relatioship already confirmed legally. When social network members were categorised and examined, the closest social network members did not differ by sex, but were varied in terms of relationship types. In the flirt group, one of their friends among his/her social network and their partners’ social network was specified as the closest social network member whereas in the married group, the closest social network member among his/her social network was their mother while it was their sibling among partner’s social network.

Efficient local behavioral-change strategies to reduce the spread of epidemics in networks

Science.gov (United States)

Bu, Yilei; Gregory, Steve; Mills, Harriet L.

2013-10-01

It has recently become established that the spread of infectious diseases between humans is affected not only by the pathogen itself but also by changes in behavior as the population becomes aware of the epidemic, for example, social distancing. It is also well known that community structure (the existence of relatively densely connected groups of vertices) in contact networks influences the spread of disease. We propose a set of local strategies for social distancing, based on community structure, that can be employed in the event of an epidemic to reduce the epidemic size. Unlike most social distancing methods, ours do not require individuals to know the disease state (infected or susceptible, etc.) of others, and we do not make the unrealistic assumption that the structure of the entire contact network is known. Instead, the recommended behavior change is based only on an individual's local view of the network. Each individual avoids contact with a fraction of his/her contacts, using knowledge of his/her local network to decide which contacts should be avoided. If the behavior change occurs only when an individual becomes ill or aware of the disease, these strategies can substantially reduce epidemic size with a relatively small cost, measured by the number of contacts avoided.

IRLT: Integrating Reputation and Local Trust for Trustworthy Service Recommendation in Service-Oriented Social Networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Zhiquan; Ma, Jianfeng; Jiang, Zhongyuan; Miao, Yinbin; Gao, Cong

2016-01-01

With the prevalence of Social Networks (SNs) and services, plenty of trust models for Trustworthy Service Recommendation (TSR) in Service-oriented SNs (S-SNs) have been proposed. The reputation-based schemes usually do not contain user preferences and are vulnerable to unfair rating attacks. Meanwhile, the local trust-based schemes generally have low reliability or even fail to work when the trust path is too long or does not exist. Thus it is beneficial to integrate them for TSR in S-SNs. This work improves the state-of-the-art Combining Global and Local Trust (CGLT) scheme and proposes a novel Integrating Reputation and Local Trust (IRLT) model which mainly includes four modules, namely Service Recommendation Interface (SRI) module, Local Trust-based Trust Evaluation (LTTE) module, Reputation-based Trust Evaluation (RTE) module and Aggregation Trust Evaluation (ATE) module. Besides, a synthetic S-SN based on the famous Advogato dataset is deployed and the well-known Discount Cumulative Gain (DCG) metric is employed to measure the service recommendation performance of our IRLT model with comparing to that of the excellent CGLT model. The results illustrate that our IRLT model is slightly superior to the CGLT model in honest environment and significantly outperforms the CGLT model in terms of the robustness against unfair rating attacks.

The networked minority: How a small group prevailed in a local windfarm conflict

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Anderson, Carmel

2013-01-01

This paper aims to explain through a qualitative case study how a small protest group prevailed during a local windfarm conflict in south-eastern Australia. A social capital analytical framework was developed to analyse the data. The analysis found that two communities inhabited the area for which the windfarm development was proposed. The public participation process failed to address the concerns of both communities and led to the emergence of a social network of resistance. The network had high stocks of bridging social capital, which enabled an effective protest that led to the abandonment of the development. Their effectiveness was inadvertently aided by the windfarm supporters who were unable to act collectively to defend their interests because socio-economic changes in the community among other factors had led to a depletion of their social capital. In this context, different democratic participatory processes were needed to address the concerns of the two communities. Guidance and tools for researching and developing the types of participatory processes needed for vulnerable communities with low social capital and those similar to the social network with high social capital are provided. These will inform community-appropriate public participation processes and participatory planning policy. - Highlights: ► A case study of a local social network's resistance to a windfarm is undertaken. ► The link between high social capital and resistance is confirmed. ► Successful protest groups can be aided by passive windfarm supporters. ► Protesters are likely to participate in well-designed participatory processes. ► Guidance for developing community-specific participatory processes is provided

Psychology and social networks: a dynamic network theory perspective.

Science.gov (United States)

Westaby, James D; Pfaff, Danielle L; Redding, Nicholas

2014-04-01

Research on social networks has grown exponentially in recent years. However, despite its relevance, the field of psychology has been relatively slow to explain the underlying goal pursuit and resistance processes influencing social networks in the first place. In this vein, this article aims to demonstrate how a dynamic network theory perspective explains the way in which social networks influence these processes and related outcomes, such as goal achievement, performance, learning, and emotional contagion at the interpersonal level of analysis. The theory integrates goal pursuit, motivation, and conflict conceptualizations from psychology with social network concepts from sociology and organizational science to provide a taxonomy of social network role behaviors, such as goal striving, system supporting, goal preventing, system negating, and observing. This theoretical perspective provides psychologists with new tools to map social networks (e.g., dynamic network charts), which can help inform the development of change interventions. Implications for social, industrial-organizational, and counseling psychology as well as conflict resolution are discussed, and new opportunities for research are highlighted, such as those related to dynamic network intelligence (also known as cognitive accuracy), levels of analysis, methodological/ethical issues, and the need to theoretically broaden the study of social networking and social media behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

Privacy in social networking sites

OpenAIRE

Λεονάρδος, Γεώργιος; Leonardos, Giorgos

2016-01-01

The purpose of this study is to explore the aspects of privacy over the use of social networks web sites. More specific, we will show the types of social networks, their privacy mechanisms that are different in each social network site, their privacy options that are offered to users. We will report some serious privacy violations incidents of the most popular social networks sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Also, we will report some important surveys about social networks and pr...

Social traits, social networks and evolutionary biology.

Science.gov (United States)

Fisher, D N; McAdam, A G

2017-12-01

The social environment is both an important agent of selection for most organisms, and an emergent property of their interactions. As an aggregation of interactions among members of a population, the social environment is a product of many sets of relationships and so can be represented as a network or matrix. Social network analysis in animals has focused on why these networks possess the structure they do, and whether individuals' network traits, representing some aspect of their social phenotype, relate to their fitness. Meanwhile, quantitative geneticists have demonstrated that traits expressed in a social context can depend on the phenotypes and genotypes of interacting partners, leading to influences of the social environment on the traits and fitness of individuals and the evolutionary trajectories of populations. Therefore, both fields are investigating similar topics, yet have arrived at these points relatively independently. We review how these approaches are diverged, and yet how they retain clear parallelism and so strong potential for complementarity. This demonstrates that, despite separate bodies of theory, advances in one might inform the other. Techniques in network analysis for quantifying social phenotypes, and for identifying community structure, should be useful for those studying the relationship between individual behaviour and group-level phenotypes. Entering social association matrices into quantitative genetic models may also reduce bias in heritability estimates, and allow the estimation of the influence of social connectedness on trait expression. Current methods for measuring natural selection in a social context explicitly account for the fact that a trait is not necessarily the property of a single individual, something the network approaches have not yet considered when relating network metrics to individual fitness. Harnessing evolutionary models that consider traits affected by genes in other individuals (i.e. indirect genetic

The Effectiveness of Social Media Implementation at Local Government Levels

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Elvira NICA

2014-12-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this article is to gain a deeper understanding of the management of social me-dia at the local government level, the availability of opportunities for citizen dialogue on govern-ment websites, and the impact that social net-working applications have on e-government. The results of the current study converge with prior research on the growing awareness amongst government practitioners regarding the relevance of social media, the use of social media for feed-back on service quality, and privacy and security commitments in e-government. The literature on the use of information technology to transform government, the potential for online government information to contribute to citizen engagement, and the rapid growth in local government use of social media is relevant to this discussion.

PERSON IN SOCIAL NETWORKS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Андрей Борисович Шалимов

2013-11-01

Full Text Available Purpose: Our scientific purpose is creation of practical model of person’s representation in social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Classmates. As user of social networks, person is made conditional not only upon its own identity, but also upon the information about himself, which he is ready to share with his friends in contact list. Goal-setting and practical activities for their achievement mean that you should apply force, it can completely eliminates systemic factors, the system of power relations, which overwhelms human being in social networks.Methodology: The reconstruction of the model of human in the popularity of social networksResults: There is descripton of practical model of person's representation in social networks, it includes the management of own identity and the audience (the list of contacts. When person manages own identity, he answers the question, «Whom I can dare to be?». Person perceives himself in social networks' being, he understands himself and his place in the world, he identifies.Managing the way in social media means that you answer the question «What I want to tell?». Person in social media looks at events in the field of culture, economy, politics, social relations through the prism of his own attitudes, he forms and formulates his own agenda and he is going to tell about himself through them.Practical implications: Everyday people’s life, practical activities, including marketing in social networks.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12731/2218-7405-2013-9-51

Modelling animal group fission using social network dynamics.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cédric Sueur

Full Text Available Group life involves both advantages and disadvantages, meaning that individuals have to compromise between their nutritional needs and their social links. When a compromise is impossible, the group splits in order to reduce conflict of interests and favour positive social interactions between its members. In this study we built a dynamic model of social networks to represent a succession of temporary fissions involving a change in social relations that could potentially lead to irreversible group fission (i.e. no more group fusion. This is the first study that assesses how a social network changes according to group fission-fusion dynamics. We built a model that was based on different parameters: the group size, the influence of nutritional needs compared to social needs, and the changes in the social network after a temporary fission. The results obtained from this theoretical data indicate how the percentage of social relation transfer, the number of individuals and the relative importance of nutritional requirements and social links influence the average number of days before irreversible fission occurs. The greater the nutritional needs and the higher the transfer of social relations during temporary fission, the fewer days will be observed before an irreversible fission. It is crucial to bridge the gap between the individual and the population level if we hope to understand how simple, local interactions may drive ecological systems.

Towards structural controllability of local-world networks

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sun, Shiwen; Ma, Yilin; Wu, Yafang; Wang, Li; Xia, Chengyi

2016-01-01

Controlling complex networks is of vital importance in science and engineering. Meanwhile, local-world effect is an important ingredient which should be taken into consideration in the complete description of real-world complex systems. In this letter, structural controllability of a class of local-world networks is investigated. Through extensive numerical simulations, firstly, effects of local world size M and network size N on structural controllability are examined. For local-world networks with sparse topological configuration, compared to network size, local-world size can induce stronger influence on controllability, however, for dense networks, controllability is greatly affected by network size and local-world effect can be neglected. Secondly, relationships between controllability and topological properties are analyzed. Lastly, the robustness of local-world networks under targeted attacks regarding structural controllability is discussed. These results can help to deepen the understanding of structural complexity and connectivity patterns of complex systems. - Highlights: • Structural controllability of a class of local-world networks is investigated. • For sparse local-world networks, compared to network size, local-world size can bring stronger influence on controllability. • For dense networks, controllability is greatly affected by network size and the effect of local-world size can be neglected. • Structural controllability against targeted node attacks is discussed.

Towards structural controllability of local-world networks

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Sun, Shiwen, E-mail: sunsw80@126.com [Tianjin Key Laboratory of Intelligence Computing and Novel Software Technology, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin 300384 (China); Key Laboratory of Computer Vision and System (Tianjin University of Technology), Ministry of Education, Tianjin 300384 (China); Ma, Yilin; Wu, Yafang; Wang, Li; Xia, Chengyi [Tianjin Key Laboratory of Intelligence Computing and Novel Software Technology, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin 300384 (China); Key Laboratory of Computer Vision and System (Tianjin University of Technology), Ministry of Education, Tianjin 300384 (China)

2016-05-20

Controlling complex networks is of vital importance in science and engineering. Meanwhile, local-world effect is an important ingredient which should be taken into consideration in the complete description of real-world complex systems. In this letter, structural controllability of a class of local-world networks is investigated. Through extensive numerical simulations, firstly, effects of local world size M and network size N on structural controllability are examined. For local-world networks with sparse topological configuration, compared to network size, local-world size can induce stronger influence on controllability, however, for dense networks, controllability is greatly affected by network size and local-world effect can be neglected. Secondly, relationships between controllability and topological properties are analyzed. Lastly, the robustness of local-world networks under targeted attacks regarding structural controllability is discussed. These results can help to deepen the understanding of structural complexity and connectivity patterns of complex systems. - Highlights: • Structural controllability of a class of local-world networks is investigated. • For sparse local-world networks, compared to network size, local-world size can bring stronger influence on controllability. • For dense networks, controllability is greatly affected by network size and the effect of local-world size can be neglected. • Structural controllability against targeted node attacks is discussed.

Communication in Animal Social Networks

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Snijders, Lysanne; Naguib, Marc

2017-01-01

Animal social networks and animal communication networks are key disciplines for understanding animal social behavior, yet these disciplines remain poorly integrated. In this review, we show how communication and social networks are inherently linked, with social signals reflecting and affecting

Social network in patient safety: Social media visibility

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Azucena Santillán García

2011-11-01

Full Text Available Internet social network (social media is a powerful communication tool, and its use is expanding significantly. This paper seeks to know the current state of visibility in online social networks of active citizen talking about patient safety. This is an observational cross-sectional study whose target population is the websites Facebook, Twitter and Tuenti in Spain. By three consecutive cuts social profiles were found using the searching terms “seguridad+paciente” and “safety+patient”. There were found 5 profiles on Facebook that met the search criteria, 6 on Twitter and none were found on Tuenti. It is concluded that although there is evidence of the rise of social networking, citizen network involved in patient safety appears not to be significantly represented within the social networks examined.

Visualization of Social Networks

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Boertjes, E.M.; Kotterink, B.; Jager, E.J.

2011-01-01

Current visualizations of social networks are mostly some form of node-link diagram. Depending on the type of social network, this can be some treevisualization with a strict hierarchical structure or a more generic network visualization.

Multilayer Social Networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dickison, Mark; Magnani, Matteo; Rossi, Luca

social network systems, the evolution of interconnected social networks, and dynamic processes such as information spreading. A single real dataset is used to illustrate the concepts presented throughout the book, demonstrating both the practical utility and the potential shortcomings of the various...

Maintenance of cultural diversity: social roles, social networks, and cognitive networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Abrams, Marshall

2014-06-01

Smaldino suggests that patterns that give rise to group-level cultural traits can also increase individual-level cultural diversity. I distinguish social roles and related social network structures and discuss ways in which each might maintain diversity. I suggest that cognitive analogs of "cohesion," a property of networks that helps maintenance of diversity, might mediate the effects of social roles on diversity.

An index for the “local‿ influence in social networks

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Rossi, Wilbert Samuel; Frasca, Paolo

2016-01-01

In this paper we define a novel index of node centrality in social networks that extends the recently proposed Harmonic Influence Centrality (HIC) and that we call Local- Harmonic Influence centrality (L-HIC). Indeed, when compared with the HIC, our index shows a local nature that rules out one

Social exchange : Relations and networks

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Dijkstra, Jacob

2015-01-01

In this short paper, I review the literature on social exchange networks, with specific attention to theoretical and experimental research. I indicate how social exchange theory is rooted in general social theory and mention a few of its main links to social network analysis and empirical network

Sharing cost in social community networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Pal, Ranjan; Elango, Divya; Wardana, Satya Ardhy

2012-01-01

their deployment in a residential locality. Our proposed mechanism accounts for heterogeneous user preferences towards different router features and comes up with the optimal (feature-set, user costs) router blueprint that satisfies each user in a locality, in turn motivating them to buy routers and thereby improve......Wireless social community networks (WSCNs) is an emerging technology that operate in the unlicensed spectrum and have been created as an alternative to cellular wireless networks for providing low-cost, high speed wireless data access in urban areas. WSCNs is an upcoming idea that is starting...... reflect their slow progress in capturing the WiFi router market. In this paper, we look at a router design and cost sharing problem in WSCNs to improve deployment. We devise a simple to implement, successful, budget-balanced, ex-post efficient, and individually rational auction-based mechanism...

Social exchange: Relations and networks

OpenAIRE

Dijkstra, Jacob

2015-01-01

In this short paper, I review the literature on social exchange networks, with specific attention to theoretical and experimental research. I indicate how social exchange theory is rooted in general social theory and mention a few of its main links to social network analysis and empirical network research. The paper provides an accessible entry into the literature on social exchange.

Myths on Bi-direction Communication of Web 2.0 Based Social Networks: Is Social Network Truly Interactive?

Science.gov (United States)

2011-03-10

more and more social interactions are happening on the on-line. Especially recent uptake of the social network sites (SNSs), such as Facebook (http...Smart phones • Live updates within social networks • Facebook & Twitters Solution: WebMon for Risk Management Need for New WebMon for Social Networks ...Title: Myths on bi-direction communication of Web 2.0 based social networks : Is social network truly interactive

IRLT: Integrating Reputation and Local Trust for Trustworthy Service Recommendation in Service-Oriented Social Networks.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Zhiquan Liu

Full Text Available With the prevalence of Social Networks (SNs and services, plenty of trust models for Trustworthy Service Recommendation (TSR in Service-oriented SNs (S-SNs have been proposed. The reputation-based schemes usually do not contain user preferences and are vulnerable to unfair rating attacks. Meanwhile, the local trust-based schemes generally have low reliability or even fail to work when the trust path is too long or does not exist. Thus it is beneficial to integrate them for TSR in S-SNs. This work improves the state-of-the-art Combining Global and Local Trust (CGLT scheme and proposes a novel Integrating Reputation and Local Trust (IRLT model which mainly includes four modules, namely Service Recommendation Interface (SRI module, Local Trust-based Trust Evaluation (LTTE module, Reputation-based Trust Evaluation (RTE module and Aggregation Trust Evaluation (ATE module. Besides, a synthetic S-SN based on the famous Advogato dataset is deployed and the well-known Discount Cumulative Gain (DCG metric is employed to measure the service recommendation performance of our IRLT model with comparing to that of the excellent CGLT model. The results illustrate that our IRLT model is slightly superior to the CGLT model in honest environment and significantly outperforms the CGLT model in terms of the robustness against unfair rating attacks.

Identifying Opinion Leaders to Promote Organ Donation on Social Media: Network Study

Science.gov (United States)

Salmon, Charles T

2018-01-01

Background In the recent years, social networking sites (SNSs, also called social media) have been adopted in organ donation campaigns, and recruiting opinion leaders for such campaigns has been found effective in promoting behavioral changes. Objective The aim of this paper was to focus on the dissemination of organ donation tweets on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, and to examine the opinion leadership in the retweet network of popular organ donation messages using social network analysis. It also aimed to investigate how personal and social attributes contribute to a user’s opinion leadership on the topic of organ donation. Methods All messages about organ donation posted on Weibo from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2015 were extracted using Python Web crawler. A retweet network with 505,047 nodes and 545,312 edges of the popular messages (n=206) was constructed and analyzed. The local and global opinion leaderships were measured using network metrics, and the roles of personal attributes, professional knowledge, and social positions in obtaining the opinion leadership were examined using general linear model. Results The findings revealed that personal attributes, professional knowledge, and social positions predicted individual’s local opinion leadership in the retweet network of popular organ donation messages. Alternatively, personal attributes and social positions, but not professional knowledge, were significantly associated with global opinion leadership. Conclusions The findings of this study indicate that health campaign designers may recruit peer leaders in SNS organ donation promotions to facilitate information sharing among the target audience. Users who are unverified, active, well connected, and experienced with information and communications technology (ICT) will accelerate the sharing of organ donation messages in the global environment. Medical professionals such as organ transplant surgeons who can wield a great amount of

Entropy of dynamical social networks

Science.gov (United States)

Zhao, Kun; Karsai, Marton; Bianconi, Ginestra

2012-02-01

Dynamical social networks are evolving rapidly and are highly adaptive. Characterizing the information encoded in social networks is essential to gain insight into the structure, evolution, adaptability and dynamics. Recently entropy measures have been used to quantify the information in email correspondence, static networks and mobility patterns. Nevertheless, we still lack methods to quantify the information encoded in time-varying dynamical social networks. In this talk we present a model to quantify the entropy of dynamical social networks and use this model to analyze the data of phone-call communication. We show evidence that the entropy of the phone-call interaction network changes according to circadian rhythms. Moreover we show that social networks are extremely adaptive and are modified by the use of technologies such as mobile phone communication. Indeed the statistics of duration of phone-call is described by a Weibull distribution and is significantly different from the distribution of duration of face-to-face interactions in a conference. Finally we investigate how much the entropy of dynamical social networks changes in realistic models of phone-call or face-to face interactions characterizing in this way different type human social behavior.

Modern Social Support Structures: Online Social Networks and their Implications for Social Workers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kala Chakradhar

2009-03-01

Full Text Available Mapping and assessing social networks and the quality of their social support is a valuable intervention strategy for social workers. These networks have now spread onto the digital realm in the form of Online Social Networks (OSNs. This study investigated the nature of social support provided by such networks to their users in a rural mid-South University (USA and explored parallels with the current understanding of social support in conventional social networks. A web-based survey administered to college students revealed that users of these online networks were predominantly undergraduate first year students, female, single, unemployed and from a variety of academic disciplines. The examination of the components of OSNs appears to mirror those of offline networks. They also seem to complement the effects of each other while contributing to an individual's support system. The paper concludes with critical implications of such online social networking for University students and social workers in practice and education.

Attachment and social networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Gillath, Omri; C Karantzas, Gery; Lee, Juwon

2018-02-21

The current review covers two lines of research linking attachment and social networks. One focuses on attachment networks (the people who fulfill one's attachment needs), examining composition and age-related differences pertaining to these networks. The other line integrates attachment with social network analysis to investigate how individual differences in adult attachment are associated with the management and characteristics (e.g., density, multiplexity, and centrality) of people's social networks. We show that most people's attachment networks are small and hierarchical, with one figure being the primary attachment figure (often a mother or romantic partner, depending on age). Furthermore, attachment style predicts network characteristics and management, such that insecurity is associated with less closeness, multiplexity, centrality, and poorer management (less maintenance, more dissolution). Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Social inheritance can explain the structure of animal social networks

Science.gov (United States)

Ilany, Amiyaal; Akçay, Erol

2016-01-01

The social network structure of animal populations has major implications for survival, reproductive success, sexual selection and pathogen transmission of individuals. But as of yet, no general theory of social network structure exists that can explain the diversity of social networks observed in nature, and serve as a null model for detecting species and population-specific factors. Here we propose a simple and generally applicable model of social network structure. We consider the emergence of network structure as a result of social inheritance, in which newborns are likely to bond with maternal contacts, and via forming bonds randomly. We compare model output with data from several species, showing that it can generate networks with properties such as those observed in real social systems. Our model demonstrates that important observed properties of social networks, including heritability of network position or assortative associations, can be understood as consequences of social inheritance. PMID:27352101

Seven Deadliest Social Network Attacks

CERN Document Server

Timm, Carl

2010-01-01

Do you need to keep up with the latest hacks, attacks, and exploits effecting social networks? Then you need Seven Deadliest Social Network Attacks. This book pinpoints the most dangerous hacks and exploits specific to social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace, laying out the anatomy of these attacks including how to make your system more secure. You will discover the best ways to defend against these vicious hacks with step-by-step instruction and learn techniques to make your computer and network impenetrable. Attacks detailed in this book include: Social Networking Infrastruct

Next Generation Social Networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sørensen, Lene Tolstrup; Skouby, Knud Erik

2008-01-01

different online networks for communities of people who share interests or individuals who presents themselves through user produced content is what makes up the social networking of today. The purpose of this paper is to discuss perceived user requirements to the next generation social networks. The paper...

Social network sites: Indispensable or optional social tools?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Shklovski, Irina

2012-01-01

Much research has enumerated potential benefits of online social network sites. Given the pervasiveness of these sites and the numbers of people that use them daily, both re-search and media tend to make the assumption that social network sites have become indispensible to their users. Based...... on the analysis of qualitative data from users of social network sites in Russia and Kazakhstan, this paper consid-ers under what conditions social network sites can become indispensable to their users and when these technologies remain on the periphery of life despite fulfilling useful func-tions. For some...... respondents, these sites had become indis-pensable tools as they were integrated into everyday rou-tines of communicating with emotionally important and proximal contacts and were often used for coordination of offline activities. For others social network sites remained spaces where they occasionally visited...

Real-time community detection in full social networks on a laptop

Science.gov (United States)

Chamberlain, Benjamin Paul; Levy-Kramer, Josh; Humby, Clive

2018-01-01

For a broad range of research and practical applications it is important to understand the allegiances, communities and structure of key players in society. One promising direction towards extracting this information is to exploit the rich relational data in digital social networks (the social graph). As global social networks (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) are very large, most approaches make use of distributed computing systems for this purpose. Distributing graph processing requires solving many difficult engineering problems, which has lead some researchers to look at single-machine solutions that are faster and easier to maintain. In this article, we present an approach for analyzing full social networks on a standard laptop, allowing for interactive exploration of the communities in the locality of a set of user specified query vertices. The key idea is that the aggregate actions of large numbers of users can be compressed into a data structure that encapsulates the edge weights between vertices in a derived graph. Local communities can be constructed by selecting vertices that are connected to the query vertices with high edge weights in the derived graph. This compression is robust to noise and allows for interactive queries of local communities in real-time, which we define to be less than the average human reaction time of 0.25s. We achieve single-machine real-time performance by compressing the neighborhood of each vertex using minhash signatures and facilitate rapid queries through Locality Sensitive Hashing. These techniques reduce query times from hours using industrial desktop machines operating on the full graph to milliseconds on standard laptops. Our method allows exploration of strongly associated regions (i.e., communities) of large graphs in real-time on a laptop. It has been deployed in software that is actively used by social network analysts and offers another channel for media owners to monetize their data, helping them to continue to provide

Real-time community detection in full social networks on a laptop.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Benjamin Paul Chamberlain

Full Text Available For a broad range of research and practical applications it is important to understand the allegiances, communities and structure of key players in society. One promising direction towards extracting this information is to exploit the rich relational data in digital social networks (the social graph. As global social networks (e.g., Facebook and Twitter are very large, most approaches make use of distributed computing systems for this purpose. Distributing graph processing requires solving many difficult engineering problems, which has lead some researchers to look at single-machine solutions that are faster and easier to maintain. In this article, we present an approach for analyzing full social networks on a standard laptop, allowing for interactive exploration of the communities in the locality of a set of user specified query vertices. The key idea is that the aggregate actions of large numbers of users can be compressed into a data structure that encapsulates the edge weights between vertices in a derived graph. Local communities can be constructed by selecting vertices that are connected to the query vertices with high edge weights in the derived graph. This compression is robust to noise and allows for interactive queries of local communities in real-time, which we define to be less than the average human reaction time of 0.25s. We achieve single-machine real-time performance by compressing the neighborhood of each vertex using minhash signatures and facilitate rapid queries through Locality Sensitive Hashing. These techniques reduce query times from hours using industrial desktop machines operating on the full graph to milliseconds on standard laptops. Our method allows exploration of strongly associated regions (i.e., communities of large graphs in real-time on a laptop. It has been deployed in software that is actively used by social network analysts and offers another channel for media owners to monetize their data, helping them to

Real-time community detection in full social networks on a laptop.

Science.gov (United States)

Chamberlain, Benjamin Paul; Levy-Kramer, Josh; Humby, Clive; Deisenroth, Marc Peter

2018-01-01

For a broad range of research and practical applications it is important to understand the allegiances, communities and structure of key players in society. One promising direction towards extracting this information is to exploit the rich relational data in digital social networks (the social graph). As global social networks (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) are very large, most approaches make use of distributed computing systems for this purpose. Distributing graph processing requires solving many difficult engineering problems, which has lead some researchers to look at single-machine solutions that are faster and easier to maintain. In this article, we present an approach for analyzing full social networks on a standard laptop, allowing for interactive exploration of the communities in the locality of a set of user specified query vertices. The key idea is that the aggregate actions of large numbers of users can be compressed into a data structure that encapsulates the edge weights between vertices in a derived graph. Local communities can be constructed by selecting vertices that are connected to the query vertices with high edge weights in the derived graph. This compression is robust to noise and allows for interactive queries of local communities in real-time, which we define to be less than the average human reaction time of 0.25s. We achieve single-machine real-time performance by compressing the neighborhood of each vertex using minhash signatures and facilitate rapid queries through Locality Sensitive Hashing. These techniques reduce query times from hours using industrial desktop machines operating on the full graph to milliseconds on standard laptops. Our method allows exploration of strongly associated regions (i.e., communities) of large graphs in real-time on a laptop. It has been deployed in software that is actively used by social network analysts and offers another channel for media owners to monetize their data, helping them to continue to provide

Individual Search and Social Networks

OpenAIRE

Sanjeev Goyal; Stephanie Rosenkranz; Utz Weitzel; Vincent Buskens

2014-01-01

The explosion in online social networks motivates an enquiry into their structure and their welfare effects. A central feature of these networks is information sharing: online social networks lower the cost of getting information from others. These lower costs affect the attractiveness of individual search vis-a-vis a reliance on social networks. The paper reports the findings of an experiment on these effects. Our experiment shows that online networks can have large effects. Information acqu...

FROM SOCIAL CAPITAL TO FIRMS NETWORKS: SOME EVIDENCE FOR EUROPE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

perrucci antonella

2012-12-01

Full Text Available The concept of development is not only referred to the level or to the growth rate of GDP of a country, but it concerns different aspects of individual and social life. Development leads to a changing of values, culture, behaviours and attitudes of people interested in it. That is to say that not only quantitative dimensions, but also qualitative ones became relevant in fostering development trajectories. Reasoning in these general terms a long and rich intellectual debate grow up in social sciences within which we focused the social capital and firm network debate. Social capital is a multidimensional determinant at base of the industrial district framework as the “network capital” represent a driver of firm’s network framework. By moving from social capital, as a local development driver, to network capital, as a global development driver, the present paper analyzes the firms’ networks determinants by identifying the conditions for some European countries. The methodology through which the results are obtained is the multidimensional scaling method which allows to define relations between countries in terms of proximity/distance with respect to the considered determinants providing a spatial representation of them.

Enterprise Social Networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Winkler, Till J.; Trier, Matthias

2017-01-01

Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs), d. h. Informationssysteme, die die Vernetzung von Mitarbeitern in Unternehmen fördern sollen, sind in verschiedenen Varianten und unter verschiedenen Bezeichnungen (etwa Enterprise Social Media, Corporate Social Software, Social Business oder Enterprise 2...

Geo-Spatial Social Network Analysis of Social Media to Mitigate Disasters

Science.gov (United States)

Carley, K. M.

2017-12-01

Understanding the spatial layout of human activity can afford a better understanding many phenomena - such as local cultural, the spread of ideas, and the scope of a disaster. Today, social media is one of the key sensors for acquiring information on socio-cultural activity, some with cues as to the geo-location. We ask, What can be learned by putting such data on maps? For example, are people who chat on line more likely to be near each other? Can Twitter data support disaster planning or early warning? In this talk, such issues are examined using data collected via Twitter and analyzed using ORA. ORA is a network analysis and visualization system. It supports not just social networks (who is interacting with whom), but also high dimensional networks with many types of nodes (e.g. people, organizations, resources, activities …) and relations, geo-spatial network analysis, dynamic network analysis, & geo-temporal analysis. Using ORA lessons learned from five case studies are considered: Arab Spring, Tsunami warning in Padang Indonesia, Twitter around Fukushima in Japan, Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda), & regional conflict. Using Padang Indonesia data, we characterize the strengths and limitations of social media data to support disaster planning & early warning, identify at risk areas & issues of concern, and estimate where people are and which areas are impacted. Using Fukushima Japanese data, social media is used to estimate geo-spatial regularities in movement and communication that can inform disaster response and risk estimation. Using Arab Spring data, we find that the spread of bots & extremists varies by country and time, to the extent that using twitter to understand who is important or what ideas are critical can be compromised. Bots and extremists can exploit disaster messaging to create havoc and facilitate criminal activity e.g. human trafficking. Event discovery mechanisms support isolating geo-epi-centers for key events become crucial. Spatial inference

Social Isolation and Spousal Violence: Comparing Female Marriage Migrants with Local Women

Science.gov (United States)

Choi, Susanne Y. P.; Cheung, Y. W.; Cheung, Adam K. L.

2012-01-01

This research examined the impact of network participation, social support, and social control on the violence victimization of female marriage migrants by a spouse. Data were from a household survey of 492 cross-border and 379 local married couples in Hong Kong in 2007. The findings indicated that female marriage migrants were more vulnerable to…

Local Area Networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Marks, Kenneth E.; Nielsen, Steven

1991-01-01

Discusses cabling that is needed in local area networks (LANs). Types of cables that may be selected are described, including twisted pair, coaxial cables (or ethernet), and fiber optics; network topologies, the manner in which the cables are laid out, are considered; and cable installation issues are discussed. (LRW)

Online social networking for radiology.

Science.gov (United States)

Auffermann, William F; Chetlen, Alison L; Colucci, Andrew T; DeQuesada, Ivan M; Grajo, Joseph R; Heller, Matthew T; Nowitzki, Kristina M; Sherry, Steven J; Tillack, Allison A

2015-01-01

Online social networking services have changed the way we interact as a society and offer many opportunities to improve the way we practice radiology and medicine in general. This article begins with an introduction to social networking. Next, the latest advances in online social networking are reviewed, and areas where radiologists and clinicians may benefit from these new tools are discussed. This article concludes with several steps that the interested reader can take to become more involved in online social networking. Copyright © 2015 AUR. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A Study on Recommendation Systems in Location Based Social Networking

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ranganath Ashok Kumar

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Smart devices in the hands of people are revolutionizing the social lifestyle of one's self. Everyone across the world are using smart devices linked to their social networking activities one such activity is to share location data by uploading the tagged media content like photos, videos. The data is of surroundings, events attended/attending and travel experiences. Users share their experiences at a given location through localization techniques. Using such data from social networks an attempt is made to analyse tagged media content to acquire information on user context, individual’s interests, tastes, behaviours and derive meaningful relationships amongst them are referred to as Location Based Social Networks (LBSNs. The resulting information can be used to market a product and to improve business, as well recommend a travel and plan an itinerary. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of recommended systems for LBSNs covering the concepts of LBSNs, terminologies of LBSN and various recommendation systems.

Social Networks and Health.

Science.gov (United States)

Perdiaris, Christos; Chardalias, Konstantinos; Magita, Andrianna; Mechili, Aggelos E; Diomidous, Marianna

2015-01-01

Nowadays the social networks have been developed into an advanced communications tool, which is important for all people to contact each other. These specific networks do offer lots of options as well as plenty of advantages and disadvantages. The social websites are many in number and titles, such as the facebook, the twitter, the bandoo etc. One of the most important function-mechanisms for the social network websites, are the marketing tools. The future goal is suggested to be the evolution of these programs. The development of these applications, which is going to lead into a new era for the social digital communication between the internet users, all around the globe.

Emergence of scale-free close-knit friendship structure in online social networks.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ai-Xiang Cui

Full Text Available Although the structural properties of online social networks have attracted much attention, the properties of the close-knit friendship structures remain an important question. Here, we mainly focus on how these mesoscale structures are affected by the local and global structural properties. Analyzing the data of four large-scale online social networks reveals several common structural properties. It is found that not only the local structures given by the indegree, outdegree, and reciprocal degree distributions follow a similar scaling behavior, the mesoscale structures represented by the distributions of close-knit friendship structures also exhibit a similar scaling law. The degree correlation is very weak over a wide range of the degrees. We propose a simple directed network model that captures the observed properties. The model incorporates two mechanisms: reciprocation and preferential attachment. Through rate equation analysis of our model, the local-scale and mesoscale structural properties are derived. In the local-scale, the same scaling behavior of indegree and outdegree distributions stems from indegree and outdegree of nodes both growing as the same function of the introduction time, and the reciprocal degree distribution also shows the same power-law due to the linear relationship between the reciprocal degree and in/outdegree of nodes. In the mesoscale, the distributions of four closed triples representing close-knit friendship structures are found to exhibit identical power-laws, a behavior attributed to the negligible degree correlations. Intriguingly, all the power-law exponents of the distributions in the local-scale and mesoscale depend only on one global parameter, the mean in/outdegree, while both the mean in/outdegree and the reciprocity together determine the ratio of the reciprocal degree of a node to its in/outdegree. Structural properties of numerical simulated networks are analyzed and compared with each of the four

Emergence of scale-free close-knit friendship structure in online social networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Cui, Ai-Xiang; Zhang, Zi-Ke; Tang, Ming; Hui, Pak Ming; Fu, Yan

2012-01-01

Although the structural properties of online social networks have attracted much attention, the properties of the close-knit friendship structures remain an important question. Here, we mainly focus on how these mesoscale structures are affected by the local and global structural properties. Analyzing the data of four large-scale online social networks reveals several common structural properties. It is found that not only the local structures given by the indegree, outdegree, and reciprocal degree distributions follow a similar scaling behavior, the mesoscale structures represented by the distributions of close-knit friendship structures also exhibit a similar scaling law. The degree correlation is very weak over a wide range of the degrees. We propose a simple directed network model that captures the observed properties. The model incorporates two mechanisms: reciprocation and preferential attachment. Through rate equation analysis of our model, the local-scale and mesoscale structural properties are derived. In the local-scale, the same scaling behavior of indegree and outdegree distributions stems from indegree and outdegree of nodes both growing as the same function of the introduction time, and the reciprocal degree distribution also shows the same power-law due to the linear relationship between the reciprocal degree and in/outdegree of nodes. In the mesoscale, the distributions of four closed triples representing close-knit friendship structures are found to exhibit identical power-laws, a behavior attributed to the negligible degree correlations. Intriguingly, all the power-law exponents of the distributions in the local-scale and mesoscale depend only on one global parameter, the mean in/outdegree, while both the mean in/outdegree and the reciprocity together determine the ratio of the reciprocal degree of a node to its in/outdegree. Structural properties of numerical simulated networks are analyzed and compared with each of the four real networks. This

Signed Networks in Social Media

OpenAIRE

Leskovec, Jure; Huttenlocher, Daniel; Kleinberg, Jon

2010-01-01

Relations between users on social media sites often reflect a mixture of positive (friendly) and negative (antagonistic) interactions. In contrast to the bulk of research on social networks that has focused almost exclusively on positive interpretations of links between people, we study how the interplay between positive and negative relationships affects the structure of on-line social networks. We connect our analyses to theories of signed networks from social psychology. We find that the c...

A Comparison of Online Social Networks and Real-Life Social Networks: A Study of Sina Microblogging

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dayong Zhang

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Online social networks appear to enrich our social life, which raises the question whether they remove cognitive constraints on human communication and improve human social capabilities. In this paper, we analyze the users' following and followed relationships based on the data of Sina Microblogging and reveal several structural properties of Sina Microblogging. Compared with real-life social networks, our results confirm some similar features. However, Sina Microblogging also shows its own specialties, such as hierarchical structure and degree disassortativity, which all mark a deviation from real-life social networks. The low cost of the online network forms a broader perspective, and the one-way link relationships make it easy to spread information, but the online social network does not make too much difference in the creation of strong interpersonal relationships. Finally, we describe the mechanisms for the formation of these characteristics and discuss the implications of these structural properties for the real-life social networks.

Social networks in cardiovascular disease management.

Science.gov (United States)

Shaya, Fadia T; Yan, Xia; Farshid, Maryam; Barakat, Samer; Jung, Miah; Low, Sara; Fedder, Donald

2010-12-01

Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in the USA. Social networks have a positive association with obesity, smoking cessation and weight loss. This article summarizes studies evaluating the impact of social networks on the management of cardiovascular disease. The 35 studies included in the article describe the impact of social networks on a decreased incidence of cardiovascular disease, depression and mortality. In addition, having a large-sized social network is also associated with better outcomes and improved health. The role of pharmacists is beginning to play an important role in the patient-centered medical home, which needs to be incorporated into social networks. The patient-centered medical home can serve as an adaptive source for social network evolvement.

Online Advertising in Social Networks

Science.gov (United States)

Bagherjeiran, Abraham; Bhatt, Rushi P.; Parekh, Rajesh; Chaoji, Vineet

Online social networks offer opportunities to analyze user behavior and social connectivity and leverage resulting insights for effective online advertising. This chapter focuses on the role of social network information in online display advertising.

Social Networking Sites in Education

OpenAIRE

Suková, Lenka

2010-01-01

Diploma thesis deals with social networking sites and their use in education. Thesis is divided into two general parts. The first part deals with theory of learning; Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives and new educational theory based on learning in networks -- Connectivism. After that thesis focuses on the definition of social networking sites, introduction of some of the best known social networking sites and examples of their use in foreign and domestic educational practice. The sec...

Online social network sites and social capital: a case of facebook

OpenAIRE

Naseri, Samaneh

2017-01-01

The present study is a theoretical and literary review of online social network sites and their impact on social capital. In this review, the Facebook is selected as one popular and important online social networking site in the world today. To This end, first two main concepts of social capital, bridging and bonding social capital has been provided. Next, the concept of online social networks and the impact of FB on social networks are discussed.

Identifying Opinion Leaders to Promote Organ Donation on Social Media: Network Study.

Science.gov (United States)

Shi, Jingyuan; Salmon, Charles T

2018-01-09

In the recent years, social networking sites (SNSs, also called social media) have been adopted in organ donation campaigns, and recruiting opinion leaders for such campaigns has been found effective in promoting behavioral changes. The aim of this paper was to focus on the dissemination of organ donation tweets on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, and to examine the opinion leadership in the retweet network of popular organ donation messages using social network analysis. It also aimed to investigate how personal and social attributes contribute to a user's opinion leadership on the topic of organ donation. All messages about organ donation posted on Weibo from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2015 were extracted using Python Web crawler. A retweet network with 505,047 nodes and 545,312 edges of the popular messages (n=206) was constructed and analyzed. The local and global opinion leaderships were measured using network metrics, and the roles of personal attributes, professional knowledge, and social positions in obtaining the opinion leadership were examined using general linear model. The findings revealed that personal attributes, professional knowledge, and social positions predicted individual's local opinion leadership in the retweet network of popular organ donation messages. Alternatively, personal attributes and social positions, but not professional knowledge, were significantly associated with global opinion leadership. The findings of this study indicate that health campaign designers may recruit peer leaders in SNS organ donation promotions to facilitate information sharing among the target audience. Users who are unverified, active, well connected, and experienced with information and communications technology (ICT) will accelerate the sharing of organ donation messages in the global environment. Medical professionals such as organ transplant surgeons who can wield a great amount of influence on their direct connections could also effectively

THE IMAGE OF BALI TOURISM IN SOCIAL NETWORKING MEDIA

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ni Gusti Ayu Dewi Paramita Arisandi

2016-03-01

those social networking media such as Hotel, Villa, SPA, restaurants, travel agents, airlines, media, tourist attraction management has a good rating result, and it has represented that the image of Bali tourism has a good rank in the eyes of local and international tourists. This data was also strengthened by the existence of empirical studies where there were the data from a hundred tourists came to Bali both locally and internationally has filled out the questionnaire about Bali in order to obtain maximum results on the image of Bali tourism. The results showed that, social networking media were effectively used in this study. Many companies in Bali used facebook and twitter. In addition, Bali Tourism image placed in positive rank on both of social networking sites, and it was gained by the results of questionnaires spread towards the visitor.

Conceptualizing of Social Networking Sites

OpenAIRE

J. S. Sodhi; Shilpi Sharma

2012-01-01

People often move to their friends, families and colleagues when they feel urge and having doubts or queries to solve. Participation in social networking site has dramatically increased in recent years. Many social networking sites boost with million of members using their network on regular basis to communicate, share , create and collaborate with others. In this paper we explore the phenomenon of using social networking site to trace a link of the search from the community of users for bett...

Social Network Analysis and informal trade

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Walther, Olivier

networks can be applied to better understand informal trade in developing countries, with a particular focus on Africa. The paper starts by discussing some of the fundamental concepts developed by social network analysis. Through a number of case studies, we show how social network analysis can...... illuminate the relevant causes of social patterns, the impact of social ties on economic performance, the diffusion of resources and information, and the exercise of power. The paper then examines some of the methodological challenges of social network analysis and how it can be combined with other...... approaches. The paper finally highlights some of the applications of social network analysis and their implications for trade policies....

Multi-level policies and adaptive social networks – a conceptual modeling study for maintaining a polycentric governance system

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Jean-Denis Mathias

2017-03-01

Full Text Available Information and collaboration patterns embedded in social networks play key roles in multilevel and polycentric modes of governance. However, modeling the dynamics of such social networks in multilevel settings has been seldom addressed in the literature. Here we use an adaptive social network model to elaborate the interplay between a central and a local government in order to maintain a polycentric governance. More specifically, our analysis explores in what ways specific policy choices made by a central agent affect the features of an emerging social network composed of local organizations and local users. Using two types of stylized policies, adaptive co-management and adaptive one-level management, we focus on the benefits of multi-level adaptive cooperation for network management. Our analysis uses viability theory to explore and to quantify the ability of these policies to achieve specific network properties. Viability theory gives the family of policies that enables maintaining the polycentric governance unlike optimal control that gives a unique blueprint. We found that the viability of the policies can change dramatically depending on the goals and features of the social network. For some social networks, we also found a very large difference between the viability of the adaptive one-level management and adaptive co-management policies. However, results also show that adaptive co-management doesn’t always provide benefits. Hence, we argue that applying viability theory to governance networks can help policy design by analyzing the trade-off between the costs of adaptive co-management and the benefits associated with its ability to maintain desirable social network properties in a polycentric governance framework.

Social networking services: technologies and applications

OpenAIRE

Puzyrnyy, Oleksandr

2011-01-01

Puzyrnyy, Oleksandr. 2011. Social networking services: technologies and applications. Bachelor's Thesis. Kemi-Tornio University of Applied Sciences. Business and Culture. Pages 52. The aim of this thesis is to describe the concept of social networking, its technological base, business opportunities and future perspectives. The study discovers how social networks are made and which different purposes they might have. In addition, social networking is viewed as a part of business strategy o...

Brand Marketing Model on Social Networks

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Jolita Jezukevičiūtė

2014-04-01

Full Text Available The paper analyzes the brand and its marketing solutions onsocial networks. This analysis led to the creation of improvedbrand marketing model on social networks, which will contributeto the rapid and cheap organization brand recognition, increasecompetitive advantage and enhance consumer loyalty. Therefore,the brand and a variety of social networks are becoming a hotresearch area for brand marketing model on social networks.The world‘s most successful brand marketing models exploratoryanalysis of a single case study revealed a brand marketingsocial networking tools that affect consumers the most. Basedon information analysis and methodological studies, develop abrand marketing model on social networks.

User recommendation in healthcare social media by assessing user similarity in heterogeneous network.

Science.gov (United States)

Jiang, Ling; Yang, Christopher C

2017-09-01

The rapid growth of online health social websites has captured a vast amount of healthcare information and made the information easy to access for health consumers. E-patients often use these social websites for informational and emotional support. However, health consumers could be easily overwhelmed by the overloaded information. Healthcare information searching can be very difficult for consumers, not to mention most of them are not skilled information searcher. In this work, we investigate the approaches for measuring user similarity in online health social websites. By recommending similar users to consumers, we can help them to seek informational and emotional support in a more efficient way. We propose to represent the healthcare social media data as a heterogeneous healthcare information network and introduce the local and global structural approaches for measuring user similarity in a heterogeneous network. We compare the proposed structural approaches with the content-based approach. Experiments were conducted on a dataset collected from a popular online health social website, and the results showed that content-based approach performed better for inactive users, while structural approaches performed better for active users. Moreover, global structural approach outperformed local structural approach for all user groups. In addition, we conducted experiments on local and global structural approaches using different weight schemas for the edges in the network. Leverage performed the best for both local and global approaches. Finally, we integrated different approaches and demonstrated that hybrid method yielded better performance than the individual approach. The results indicate that content-based methods can effectively capture the similarity of inactive users who usually have focused interests, while structural methods can achieve better performance when rich structural information is available. Local structural approach only considers direct connections

Monasteries and social networks in the early medieval el Bierzo region

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Iñaki Martín Viso

2011-04-01

Full Text Available This article analyses the influence of monasteries on the creation of social networks based on the specific case of the El Bierzo region. Six monasteries were chosen (Santa Leocadia de Castañeda, Santos Cosme y Damián de Burbia, San Salvador de Bárcena, San Pedro de Montes, Santiago de Peñalba, and San Julián de Samos in order to study three different parameters: the social agents that interacted with the monasteries, the shaping of the monastical estates and the geographical scale of their domains. As a result of this analysis, a typology based on the way in which the social networks were organized (monasteries of local scale, monasteries with religious prestige, and monasteries linked to the monarchy, has been clearly identified. Additionally, it highlights the existence of a decentralized social pattern in which the different aristocratic groups coexisted without fierce competition because they developed on a local-regional scale, in which the monasteries served as stage for their power.

Heuristic algorithm for determination of local properties of scale-free networks

CERN Document Server

Mitrovic, M

2006-01-01

Complex networks are everywhere. Many phenomena in nature can be modeled as networks: - brain structures - protein-protein interaction networks - social interactions - the Internet and WWW. They can be represented in terms of nodes and edges connecting them. Important characteristics: - these networks are not random; they have a structured architecture. Structure of different networks are similar: - all have power law degree distribution (scale-free property) - despite large size there is usually relatively short path between any two nodes (small world property). Global characteristics: - degree distribution, clustering coefficient and the diameter. Local structure: - frequency of subgraphs of given type (subgraph of order k is a part of the network consisting of k nodes and edges between them). There are different types of subgraphs of the same order.

Social Network Perspective: Model of Student Knowledge Sharing On Social Network Media

OpenAIRE

Bentar Priyopradono; Danny Manongga; Wiranto H. Utomo

2012-01-01

Recently, the role and development of information technology especially the internet, gives impact and influence in social relationship especially for social network site services users. The impact and influence the use of Internet which is related to exchange information and knowledge sharing still become one of the interesting topics to be researched. Now, the use of social media network by students are the best way to them to increase their knowledge as communication media such as, exchang...

Evolution of Cooperation in Adaptive Social Networks

Science.gov (United States)

Segbroeck, Sven Van; Santos, Francisco C.; Traulsen, Arne; Lenaerts, Tom; Pacheco, Jorge M.

Humans are organized in societies, a phenomenon that would never have been possible without the evolution of cooperative behavior. Several mechanisms that foster this evolution have been unraveled over the years, with population structure as a prominent promoter of cooperation. Modern networks of exchange and cooperation are, however, becoming increasingly volatile, and less and less based on long-term stable structure. Here, we address how this change of paradigm aspects the evolution of cooperation. We discuss analytical and numerical models in which individuals can break social ties and create new ones. Interactions are modeled as two-player dilemmas of cooperation. Once a link between two individuals has formed, the productivity of this link is evaluated. Links can be broken off at different rates. This individual capacity of forming new links or severing inconvenient ones can effectively change the nature of the game. We address random formation of new links and local linking rules as well as different individual capacities to maintain social interactions. We conclude by discussing how adaptive social networks can become an important step towards more realistic models of cultural dynamics.

Using Social Network Research in HRM

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kaše, Robert; King, Zella; Minbaeva, Dana

2013-01-01

; the impact of social networking sites on perceptions of relationships; and ethical issues in organizational network analysis, we propose specific suggestions to bring social network perspectives closer to HRM researchers and practitioners and rebalance our attention to people and to their relationships.......The article features a conversation between Rob Cross and Martin Kilduff about organizational network analysis in research and practice. It demonstrates the value of using social network perspectives in HRM. Drawing on the discussion about managing personal networks; managing the networks of others...

Mobile social networking an innovative approach

CERN Document Server

Zhang, Daqing

2014-01-01

The use of contextually aware, pervasive, distributed computing, and sensor networks to bridge the gap between the physical and online worlds is the basis of mobile social networking. This book shows how applications can be built to provide mobile social networking, the research issues that need to be solved to enable this vision, and how mobile social networking can be used to provide computational intelligence that will improve daily life. With contributions from the fields of sociology, computer science, human-computer interaction and design, this book demonstrates how mobile social networks can be inferred from users' physical interactions both with the environment and with others, as well as how users behave around them and how their behavior differs on mobile vs. traditional online social networks.

Staying Safe on Social Network Sites

Science.gov (United States)

... Tips Security Tip (ST06-003) Staying Safe on Social Networking Sites Original release date: January 26, 2011 | Last revised: ... so you should take certain precautions. What are social networking sites? Social networking sites, sometimes referred to as "friend- ...

One Health in social networks and social media.

Science.gov (United States)

Mekaru, S R; Brownstein, J S

2014-08-01

In the rapidly evolving world of social media, social networks, mobile applications and citizen science, online communities can develop organically and separately from larger or more established organisations. The One Health online community is experiencing expansion from both the bottom up and the top down. In this paper, the authors review social media's strengths and weaknesses, earlier work examining Internet resources for One Health, the current state of One Health in social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) and online social networking sites (e.g. LinkedIn and ResearchGate), as well as social media in One Health-related citizen science projects. While One Health has a fairly strong presence on websites, its social media presence is more limited and has an uneven geographic distribution. In work following the Stone Mountain Meeting,the One Health Global Network Task Force Report recommended the creation of an online community of practice. Professional social networks as well as the strategic use of social media should be employed in this effort. Finally, One Health-related research projects using volunteers (citizen science) often use social media to enhance their recruitment. Including these researchers in a community of practitioners would take full advantage of their existing social media presence. In conclusion, the interactive nature of social media, combined with increasing global Internet access, provides the One Health community with opportunities to meaningfully expand their community and promote their message.

Brand marketing model on social networks

OpenAIRE

Jezukevičiūtė, Jolita; Davidavičienė, Vida

2014-01-01

Paper analyzes the brand and its marketing solutions on social networks. This analysis led to the creation of improved brand marketing model on social networks, which will contribute to the rapid and cheap organization brand recognition, increase competitive advantage and enhance consumer loyalty. Therefore, the brand and a variety of social networks are becoming a hot research area for brand marketing model on social networks. The world‘s most successful brand marketing models exploratory an...

ECONOMICAL, ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF LOCAL FOOD SYSTEMS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ola BAREJA-WAWRYSZUK

2014-11-01

Full Text Available It is observed that quality of mass produced and highly processed food forces consumers to change their consumption habits and become more interested in locally available food products. Consumers are becoming aware of negative consequences of global food systems. As an alternative, Local Food Systems are gaining on popularity because short food supply chains offer fresh, healthy and not modified products. The popularity of Local Food Systems is reflected in the need for analysing impact and significance of those systems. Thus, this paper presents main benefits of acting locally. Local Food Systems has been reviewed in case of positive economic, environmental and social influence on the region. What is more, the paper presents consumers’ attitude to Local Food Systems. As a conclusion authors justify significance of development and investment in Local Food Systems as an alternative to agriculture networks.

Social disadvantage and borderline personality disorder: A study of social networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Beeney, Joseph E; Hallquist, Michael N; Clifton, Allan D; Lazarus, Sophie A; Pilkonis, Paul A

2018-01-01

Examining differences in social integration, social support, and relationship characteristics in social networks may be critical for understanding the character and costs of the social difficulties experienced of borderline personality disorder (BPD). We conducted an ego-based (self-reported, individual) social network analysis of 142 participants recruited from clinical and community sources. Each participant listed the 30 most significant people (called alters) in their social network, then rated each alter in terms of amount of contact, social support, attachment strength and negative interactions. In addition, measures of social integration were determined using participant's report of the connection between people in their networks. BPD was associated with poorer social support, more frequent negative interactions, and less social integration. Examination of alter-by-BPD interactions indicated that whereas participants with low BPD symptoms had close relationships with people with high centrality within their networks, participants with high BPD symptoms had their closest relationships with people less central to their networks. The results suggest that individuals with BPD are at a social disadvantage: Those with whom they are most closely linked (including romantic partners) are less socially connected (i.e., less central) within their social network. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Evaluating Form and Function of Regional Partnerships: Applying Social Network Analysis to the "Network for a Healthy California", 2001-2007

Science.gov (United States)

Gregson, Jennifer; Sowa, Marcy; Flynn, Heather Kohler

2011-01-01

Objective: To evaluate the partnership structure of the "Network for a Healthy California" ("Network"), a social marketing program, from 2001-2007, to determine if California's program was able to establish and maintain partnerships that (1) provided access to a local audience, (2) facilitated regional collaboration, (3)…

Impacts of Social Network on Therapeutic Community Participation: A Follow-up Survey of Data Gathered after Ya’an Earthquake

Science.gov (United States)

LI, Zhichao; CHEN, Yao; SUO, Liming

2015-01-01

Abstract Background In recent years, natural disasters and the accompanying health risks have become more frequent, and rehabilitation work has become an important part of government performance. On one hand, social networks play an important role in participants’ therapeutic community participation and physical & mental recovery. On the other hand, therapeutic communities with widespread participation can also contribute to community recovery after disaster. Methods This paper described a field study in an earthquake-stricken area of Ya’an. A set of 3-stage follow-up data was obtained concerning with the villagers’ participation in therapeutic community, social network status, demographic background, and other factors. The Hierarchical linear Model (HLM) method was used to investigate the determinants of social network on therapeutic community participation. Results First, social networks have significantly impacts on the annual changes of therapeutic community participation. Second, there were obvious differences in education between groups mobilized by the self-organization and local government. However, they all exerted the mobilization force through the acquaintance networks. Third, local cadre networks of villagers could negatively influence the activities of self-organized therapeutic community, while with positively influence in government-organized therapeutic activities. Conclusion This paper suggests that relevant government departments need to focus more on the reconstruction and cultivation of villagers’ social network and social capital in the process of post-disaster recovery. These findings contribute to better understandings of how social networks influence therapeutic community participation, and what role local government can play in post-disaster recovery and public health improvement after natural disasters. PMID:26060778

Impacts of Social Network on Therapeutic Community Participation: A Follow-up Survey of Data Gathered after Ya'an Earthquake.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Zhichao; Chen, Yao; Suo, Liming

2015-01-01

In recent years, natural disasters and the accompanying health risks have become more frequent, and rehabilitation work has become an important part of government performance. On one hand, social networks play an important role in participants' therapeutic community participation and physical & mental recovery. On the other hand, therapeutic communities with widespread participation can also contribute to community recovery after disaster. This paper described a field study in an earthquake-stricken area of Ya'an. A set of 3-stage follow-up data was obtained concerning with the villagers' participation in therapeutic community, social network status, demographic background, and other factors. The Hierarchical linear Model (HLM) method was used to investigate the determinants of social network on therapeutic community participation. First, social networks have significantly impacts on the annual changes of therapeutic community participation. Second, there were obvious differences in education between groups mobilized by the self-organization and local government. However, they all exerted the mobilization force through the acquaintance networks. Third, local cadre networks of villagers could negatively influence the activities of self-organized therapeutic community, while with positively influence in government-organized therapeutic activities. This paper suggests that relevant government departments need to focus more on the reconstruction and cultivation of villagers' social network and social capital in the process of post-disaster recovery. These findings contribute to better understandings of how social networks influence therapeutic community participation, and what role local government can play in post-disaster recovery and public health improvement after natural disasters.

Social multimedia signals a signal processing approach to social network phenomena

CERN Document Server

Roy, Suman Deb

2014-01-01

This book provides a comprehensive coverage of the state-of-the-art in understanding media popularity and trends in online social networks through social multimedia signals. With insights from the study of popularity and sharing patterns of online media, trend spread in social media, social network analysis for multimedia and visualizing diffusion of media in online social networks. In particular, the book will address the following important issues: Understanding social network phenomena from a signal processing point of view; The existence and popularity of multimedia as shared and social me

The Possibilities of Network Sociality

Science.gov (United States)

Willson, Michele

Technologically networked social forms are broad, extensive and in demand. The rapid development and growth of web 2.0, or the social web, is evidence of the need and indeed hunger for social connectivity: people are searching for many and varied ways of enacting being-together. However, the ways in which we think of, research and write about network(ed) sociality are relatively recent and arguably restricted, warranting further critique and development. This article attempts to do several things: it raises questions about the types of sociality enacted in contemporary techno-society; critically explores the notion of the networked individual and the focus on the individual evident in much of the technology and sociality literature and asks questions about the place of the social in these discussions. It argues for a more well-balanced and multilevelled approach to questions of sociality in networked societies. The article starts from the position that possibilities enabled/afforded by the technologies we have in place have an effect upon the ways in which we understand being in the world together and our possible actions and futures. These possibilities are more than simply supplementary; in many ways they are transformative. The ways in which we grapple with these questions reveals as much about our understandings of sociality as it does about the technologies themselves.

Active influence in dynamical models of structural balance in social networks

Science.gov (United States)

Summers, Tyler H.; Shames, Iman

2013-07-01

We consider a nonlinear dynamical system on a signed graph, which can be interpreted as a mathematical model of social networks in which the links can have both positive and negative connotations. In accordance with a concept from social psychology called structural balance, the negative links play a key role in both the structure and dynamics of the network. Recent research has shown that in a nonlinear dynamical system modeling the time evolution of “friendliness levels” in the network, two opposing factions emerge from almost any initial condition. Here we study active external influence in this dynamical model and show that any agent in the network can achieve any desired structurally balanced state from any initial condition by perturbing its own local friendliness levels. Based on this result, we also introduce a new network centrality measure for signed networks. The results are illustrated in an international-relations network using United Nations voting record data from 1946 to 2008 to estimate friendliness levels amongst various countries.

Social Rewards and Social Networks in the Human Brain.

Science.gov (United States)

Fareri, Dominic S; Delgado, Mauricio R

2014-08-01

The rapid development of social media and social networking sites in human society within the past decade has brought about an increased focus on the value of social relationships and being connected with others. Research suggests that we pursue socially valued or rewarding outcomes-approval, acceptance, reciprocity-as a means toward learning about others and fulfilling social needs of forming meaningful relationships. Focusing largely on recent advances in the human neuroimaging literature, we review findings highlighting the neural circuitry and processes that underlie pursuit of valued rewarding outcomes across non-social and social domains. We additionally discuss emerging human neuroimaging evidence supporting the idea that social rewards provide a gateway to establishing relationships and forming social networks. Characterizing the link between social network, brain, and behavior can potentially identify contributing factors to maladaptive influences on decision making within social situations. © The Author(s) 2014.

From biological and social network metaphors to coupled bio-social wireless networks

Science.gov (United States)

Barrett, Christopher L.; Eubank, Stephen; Anil Kumar, V.S.; Marathe, Madhav V.

2010-01-01

Biological and social analogies have been long applied to complex systems. Inspiration has been drawn from biological solutions to solve problems in engineering products and systems, ranging from Velcro to camouflage to robotics to adaptive and learning computing methods. In this paper, we present an overview of recent advances in understanding biological systems as networks and use this understanding to design and analyse wireless communication networks. We expand on two applications, namely cognitive sensing and control and wireless epidemiology. We discuss how our work in these two applications is motivated by biological metaphors. We believe that recent advances in computing and communications coupled with advances in health and social sciences raise the possibility of studying coupled bio-social communication networks. We argue that we can better utilise the advances in our understanding of one class of networks to better our understanding of the other. PMID:21643462

Fundamental structures of dynamic social networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sekara, Vedran; Stopczynski, Arkadiusz; Jørgensen, Sune Lehmann

2016-01-01

Social systems are in a constant state of flux, with dynamics spanning from minute-by-minute changes to patterns present on the timescale of years. Accurate models of social dynamics are important for understanding the spreading of influence or diseases, formation of friendships...... and their interactions in the network of real-world person-to-person proximity measured via Bluetooth, as well as their telecommunication networks, online social media contacts, geolocation, and demographic data. These high-resolution data allow us to observe social groups directly, rendering community detection......, and the productivity of teams. Although there has been much progress on understanding complex networks over the past decade, little is known about the regularities governing the microdynamics of social networks. Here, we explore the dynamic social network of a densely-connected population of ∼1,000 individuals...

A meta-analysis of social networking online and social capital

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Liu, Dong; Ainsworth, Sarah E.; Baumeister, Roy F.

2016-01-01

Social networking sites offer new avenues for interpersonal communication that may enable people to build social capital. The meta-analyses reported in this paper evaluated the relationship between social network site (SNS) use and 2 types of social capital: bridging social capital and bonding

Use of social network sites and instant messaging does not lead to increased offline social network size, or to emotionally closer relationships with offline network members.

Science.gov (United States)

Pollet, Thomas V; Roberts, Sam G B; Dunbar, Robin I M

2011-04-01

The effect of Internet use on social relationships is still a matter of intense debate. This study examined the relationships between use of social media (instant messaging and social network sites), network size, and emotional closeness in a sample of 117 individuals aged 18 to 63 years old. Time spent using social media was associated with a larger number of online social network "friends." However, time spent using social media was not associated with larger offline networks, or feeling emotionally closer to offline network members. Further, those that used social media, as compared to non-users of social media, did not have larger offline networks, and were not emotionally closer to offline network members. These results highlight the importance of considering potential time and cognitive constraints on offline social networks when examining the impact of social media use on social relationships.

Agent-Based Modeling of China's Rural-Urban Migration and Social Network Structure.

Science.gov (United States)

Fu, Zhaohao; Hao, Lingxin

2018-01-15

We analyze China's rural-urban migration and endogenous social network structures using agent-based modeling. The agents from census micro data are located in their rural origin with an empirical-estimated prior propensity to move. The population-scale social network is a hybrid one, combining observed family ties and locations of the origin with a parameter space calibrated from census, survey and aggregate data and sampled using a stepwise Latin Hypercube Sampling method. At monthly intervals, some agents migrate and these migratory acts change the social network by turning within-nonmigrant connections to between-migrant-nonmigrant connections, turning local connections to nonlocal connections, and adding among-migrant connections. In turn, the changing social network structure updates migratory propensities of those well-connected nonmigrants who become more likely to move. These two processes iterate over time. Using a core-periphery method developed from the k -core decomposition method, we identify and quantify the network structural changes and map these changes with the migration acceleration patterns. We conclude that network structural changes are essential for explaining migration acceleration observed in China during the 1995-2000 period.

Agent-based modeling of China's rural-urban migration and social network structure

Science.gov (United States)

Fu, Zhaohao; Hao, Lingxin

2018-01-01

We analyze China's rural-urban migration and endogenous social network structures using agent-based modeling. The agents from census micro data are located in their rural origin with an empirical-estimated prior propensity to move. The population-scale social network is a hybrid one, combining observed family ties and locations of the origin with a parameter space calibrated from census, survey and aggregate data and sampled using a stepwise Latin Hypercube Sampling method. At monthly intervals, some agents migrate and these migratory acts change the social network by turning within-nonmigrant connections to between-migrant-nonmigrant connections, turning local connections to nonlocal connections, and adding among-migrant connections. In turn, the changing social network structure updates migratory propensities of those well-connected nonmigrants who become more likely to move. These two processes iterate over time. Using a core-periphery method developed from the k-core decomposition method, we identify and quantify the network structural changes and map these changes with the migration acceleration patterns. We conclude that network structural changes are essential for explaining migration acceleration observed in China during the 1995-2000 period.

Party Members in Context. Social networks and local branches as context for party membership

OpenAIRE

Paulis, Emilien

2018-01-01

In this doctoral dissertation, I put party members and activists back in context. I stress theimportance of two contextual dimensions, often overlooked in the scientific literature. On theone hand, I put forward social network explanations of party membership and activism,emphasizing the importance of social interactions, relations and structures, which were scarcelyexplored as potential triggers. Like other forms of participation, party membership haspredominantly been portrayed through indi...

SOCIAL NETWORKS AND INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Veronica GHEORGHIȚĂ

2014-11-01

Full Text Available Social networks visible influence people's ability to interact and communicate. Extending social circles by establishing virtual links involves a number of positive aspects such as: instant access to options for interaction, sharing of information to large communities of people, intensification of acts of communication, high levels of feedback and trust with people with whom we communicate. On the other hand, social networks adversely affects communication by decreasing the interaction face to face, by imposing superficial communications experiences, grammatical and spelling erosion of the language. Therefore, the study aims to capture the spread of social networks, their use and impact on interpersonal communication. More specifically, they look for the answer to the question: what is the nature of interpersonal communication that is found on social networking sites: personal, emotional, private or shared, informal, and public?

HIV/AIDS, social capital, and online social networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Drushel, Bruce E

2013-01-01

The prospects for online social networks as sites of information-gathering and affiliation for persons with AIDS and others concerned about HIV/AIDS not only represent the latest development in a trend toward circumventing traditional media and official information sources, but also may offer hope for a revitalization of HIV/AIDS discourse in the public sphere. This article provides an overview of three decades of information-seeking on the pandemic and its social and personal implications, as well as case studies of three examples of social networking surrounding HIV/AIDS. It finds preliminary evidence of the formation of strong and weak ties as described in Social Network Theory and suggests that the online accumulation of social capital by opinion leaders could facilitate dissemination of messages on HIV/AIDS awareness and testing.

Social Networks and Technology Adoption

OpenAIRE

Hogset, Heidi

2005-01-01

This study analyzes social network effects on Kenyan smallholders' decision to adopt improved natural resource management techniques. These effects are decomposed into effects from social influence and learning through networks (strong ties), group effects, weak ties effects, informal finance, and conflicts arising from technological externalities, controlling for non-network effects.

Social networks, social support and psychiatric symptoms: social determinants and associations within a multicultural community population.

Science.gov (United States)

Smyth, Natasha; Siriwardhana, Chesmal; Hotopf, Matthew; Hatch, Stephani L

2015-07-01

Little is known about how social networks and social support are distributed within diverse communities and how different types of each are associated with a range of psychiatric symptoms. This study aims to address such shortcomings by: (1) describing the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of social networks and social support in a multicultural population and (2) examining how each is associated with multiple mental health outcomes. Data is drawn from the South East London Community Health Study; a cross-sectional study of 1,698 adults conducted between 2008 and 2010. The findings demonstrate variation in social networks and social support by socio-demographic factors. Ethnic minority groups reported larger family networks but less perceived instrumental support. Older individuals and migrant groups reported lower levels of particular network and support types. Individuals from lower socioeconomic groups tended to report less social networks and support across the indicators measured. Perceived emotional and instrumental support, family and friend network size emerged as protective factors for common mental disorder, personality dysfunction and psychotic experiences. In contrast, both social networks and social support appear less relevant for hazardous alcohol use. The findings both confirm established knowledge that social networks and social support exert differential effects on mental health and furthermore suggest that the particular type of social support may be important. In contrast, different types of social network appear to impact upon poor mental health in a more uniform way. Future psychosocial strategies promoting mental health should consider which social groups are vulnerable to reduced social networks and poor social support and which diagnostic groups may benefit most.

Understanding Social Networks: Theories, Concepts, and Findings

Science.gov (United States)

Kadushin, Charles

2012-01-01

Despite the swift spread of social network concepts and their applications and the rising use of network analysis in social science, there is no book that provides a thorough general introduction for the serious reader. "Understanding Social Networks" fills that gap by explaining the big ideas that underlie the social network phenomenon.…

Networking for philanthropy: increasing volunteer behavior via social networking sites.

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, Yoojung; Lee, Wei-Na

2014-03-01

Social networking sites (SNSs) provide a unique social venue to engage the young generation in philanthropy through their networking capabilities. An integrated model that incorporates social capital into the Theory of Reasoned Action is developed to explain volunteer behavior through social networks. As expected, volunteer behavior was predicted by volunteer intention, which was influenced by attitudes and subjective norms. In addition, social capital, an outcome of the extensive use of SNSs, was as an important driver of users' attitude and subjective norms toward volunteering via SNSs.

Analyzing negative ties in social networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mankirat Kaur

2016-03-01

Full Text Available Online social networks are a source of sharing information and maintaining personal contacts with other people through social interactions and thus forming virtual communities online. Social networks are crowded with positive and negative relations. Positive relations are formed by support, endorsement and friendship and thus, create a network of well-connected users whereas negative relations are a result of opposition, distrust and avoidance creating disconnected networks. Due to increase in illegal activities such as masquerading, conspiring and creating fake profiles on online social networks, exploring and analyzing these negative activities becomes the need of hour. Usually negative ties are treated in same way as positive ties in many theories such as balance theory and blockmodeling analysis. But the standard concepts of social network analysis do not yield same results in respect of each tie. This paper presents a survey on analyzing negative ties in social networks through various types of network analysis techniques that are used for examining ties such as status, centrality and power measures. Due to the difference in characteristics of flow in positive and negative tie networks some of these measures are not applicable on negative ties. This paper also discusses new methods that have been developed specifically for analyzing negative ties such as negative degree, and h∗ measure along with the measures based on mixture of positive and negative ties. The different types of social network analysis approaches have been reviewed and compared to determine the best approach that can appropriately identify the negative ties in online networks. It has been analyzed that only few measures such as Degree and PN centrality are applicable for identifying outsiders in network. For applicability in online networks, the performance of PN measure needs to be verified and further, new measures should be developed based upon negative clique concept.

Underage Children and Social Networking

Science.gov (United States)

Weeden, Shalynn; Cooke, Bethany; McVey, Michael

2013-01-01

Despite minimum age requirements for joining popular social networking services such as Facebook, many students misrepresent their real ages and join as active participants in the networks. This descriptive study examines the use of social networking services (SNSs) by children under the age of 13. The researchers surveyed a sample of 199…

Networking, or What the Social Means in Social Media

OpenAIRE

Taina Bucher

2015-01-01

This article questions the meaning of the social in social media. It does this by revisiting boyd and Ellison’s seminal paper and definition of social network sites. The article argues that social media are not so much about articulating or making an existing network visible. Rather, being social in the context of social media simply means creating connections within the boundaries of adaptive algorithmic architectures. Every click, share, like, and post creates a connection, initiates a rela...

Social Media for Enhancing Civil Society and Disaster Relief: Usage by Local Municipalities in Japan

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Muneo Kaigo

2015-10-01

Full Text Available This main focus of this article is a case study that analyzes social media usage by a local municipality in Japan, and on the possibilities and problems of complementary communication channels such as social networking services for promoting civil society activities and linking civil society organizations. We examine how in the past, Japanese municipalities have been using social media and social networking services for enhancing civil society and how social networking services are a potential tool that can provide vital information and connect citizens, municipal governments and civil society. This article focuses on the first phase of the Tsukuba Civic Activities Cyber-Square [Tsukuba Shimin Katsudō no Hiroba] on Facebook Experiment in 2012 and how it functioned during and after the May 6, 2012 Tsukuba city tornado disaster for the subsequent relief and support activities during May 2012.

Brand Marketing Model on Social Networks

OpenAIRE

Jolita Jezukevičiūtė; Vida Davidavičienė

2014-01-01

The paper analyzes the brand and its marketing solutions onsocial networks. This analysis led to the creation of improvedbrand marketing model on social networks, which will contributeto the rapid and cheap organization brand recognition, increasecompetitive advantage and enhance consumer loyalty. Therefore,the brand and a variety of social networks are becoming a hotresearch area for brand marketing model on social networks.The world‘s most successful brand marketing models exploratoryanalys...

Data mining for social network data

CERN Document Server

Memon, Nasrullah; Hicks, David L; Chen, Hsinchun

2010-01-01

Driven by counter-terrorism efforts, marketing analysis and an explosion in online social networking in recent years, data mining has moved to the forefront of information science. This proposed Special Issue on ""Data Mining for Social Network Data"" will present a broad range of recent studies in social networking analysis. It will focus on emerging trends and needs in discovery and analysis of communities, solitary and social activities, and activities in open fora, and commercial sites as well. It will also look at network modeling, infrastructure construction, dynamic growth and evolution

Philosophy of social networking

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Markova T. V.

2018-04-01

Full Text Available the article is devoted to the study of social networks impact on an individual, which are an important part of a modern society. Through reflections the reasons of the popularity of the phenomenon of virtual communication in the 21st century are determined: what drives a person when he / she registers on the sites for communication, premises for his / her actions and consequences. The latter is viewed from both a social and a personal point of view. After analyzing the charts of social networks popularity, the authors come to the conclusion that there is an increase in the population of the virtual communication supporters. It allows to assert that the problem of the termination of live communication is relevant to this day. Dualism of social networks influence on the consciousness of an individual is stated: together with negative consequences positive aspects are considered. By analyzing social media researches, as well as by the means of a survey, the dominant reason for the world wide web entering is identified. After that, it is clearly shown what a typical site for communication is; as a result, the pros and cons of such time spending are specified. The conclusion states the predominance of the Internet dependence over the other types of dependencies, also forecasts are made for the future of both social networks and the people caught in their web.

Volunteerism: Social Network Dynamics and Education

Science.gov (United States)

Ajrouch, Kristine J.; Antonucci, Toni C.; Webster, Noah J.

2016-01-01

Objectives . We examine how changes in social networks influence volunteerism through bridging (diversity) and bonding (spending time) mechanisms. We further investigate whether social network change substitutes or amplifies the effects of education on volunteerism. Methods . Data (n = 543) are drawn from a two-wave survey of Social Relations and Health over the Life Course (SRHLC). Zero-inflated negative binomial regressions were conducted to test competing hypotheses about how changes in social network characteristics alone and in conjunction with education level predict likelihood and frequency of volunteering. Results . Changes in social networks were associated with volunteerism: as the proportion of family members decreased and the average number of network members living within a one-hour drive increased over time, participants reported higher odds of volunteering. The substitution hypothesis was supported: social networks that exhibited more geographic proximity and greater contact frequency over-time compensated for lower levels of education to predict volunteering more hours. Discussion . The dynamic role of social networks and the ways in which they may work through bridging and bonding to influence both likelihood and frequency of volunteering are discussed. The potential benefits of volunteerism in light of longer life expectancies and smaller families are also considered. PMID:25512570

Social networks and environmental outcomes.

Science.gov (United States)

Barnes, Michele L; Lynham, John; Kalberg, Kolter; Leung, PingSun

2016-06-07

Social networks can profoundly affect human behavior, which is the primary force driving environmental change. However, empirical evidence linking microlevel social interactions to large-scale environmental outcomes has remained scarce. Here, we leverage comprehensive data on information-sharing networks among large-scale commercial tuna fishers to examine how social networks relate to shark bycatch, a global environmental issue. We demonstrate that the tendency for fishers to primarily share information within their ethnic group creates segregated networks that are strongly correlated with shark bycatch. However, some fishers share information across ethnic lines, and examinations of their bycatch rates show that network contacts are more strongly related to fishing behaviors than ethnicity. Our findings indicate that social networks are tied to actions that can directly impact marine ecosystems, and that biases toward within-group ties may impede the diffusion of sustainable behaviors. Importantly, our analysis suggests that enhanced communication channels across segregated fisher groups could have prevented the incidental catch of over 46,000 sharks between 2008 and 2012 in a single commercial fishery.

Online networks destroy social trust

OpenAIRE

Sabatini, Fabio; Sarracino, Francesco

2014-01-01

Studies in the social capital literature have documented two stylised facts: first, a decline in measures of social participation has occurred in many OECD countries. Second, and more recently, the success of social networking sites (SNSs) has resulted in a steep rise in online social participation. Our study adds to this body of research by conducting the first empirical assessment of how online networking affects two economically relevant aspects of social capital, i.e. trust and sociabilit...

Link prediction in multiplex online social networks

Science.gov (United States)

Jalili, Mahdi; Orouskhani, Yasin; Asgari, Milad; Alipourfard, Nazanin; Perc, Matjaž

2017-02-01

Online social networks play a major role in modern societies, and they have shaped the way social relationships evolve. Link prediction in social networks has many potential applications such as recommending new items to users, friendship suggestion and discovering spurious connections. Many real social networks evolve the connections in multiple layers (e.g. multiple social networking platforms). In this article, we study the link prediction problem in multiplex networks. As an example, we consider a multiplex network of Twitter (as a microblogging service) and Foursquare (as a location-based social network). We consider social networks of the same users in these two platforms and develop a meta-path-based algorithm for predicting the links. The connectivity information of the two layers is used to predict the links in Foursquare network. Three classical classifiers (naive Bayes, support vector machines (SVM) and K-nearest neighbour) are used for the classification task. Although the networks are not highly correlated in the layers, our experiments show that including the cross-layer information significantly improves the prediction performance. The SVM classifier results in the best performance with an average accuracy of 89%.

Do Local Food Networks Foster Socio-Ecological Transitions towards Food Sovereignty? Learning from Real Place Experiences

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Juliana Lutz

2013-11-01

Full Text Available Drawing on transition theory, we conceptualize local food networks as innovations that initially function and develop in local niches within a given food regime. As niche-innovations local food networks induce socio-ecological changes on the local level and they have the potential to foster wider transformations of the dominant food regime. Many local food networks adopt the concept of food sovereignty as a kind of “leitmotif”. At the core of this concept lies the question of how to create an agro-food system that, (i allows for democratic participation and civic engagement in food production, and (ii sets up new relationships that avoid social inequity and the exploitation of both humans and nature. In this paper we shed light on how the Austrian local food network “SpeiseLokal” addresses the challenge of operationalizing the concept of food sovereignty. The case study captures the strategies which local food networks embark on and depicts the difficulties they encounter. The paper aims to identify critical points of intersection that either strengthen or constrain local food networks from becoming established, operating, and up-scaling in the ways they wish; that is, in accordance with the principles and aims of food sovereignty, while avoiding a later assimilation into the dominant food regime.

Social Media for Enhancing Stakeholders' Innovation Networks in Ontario, Canada

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kaushik, Pawandeep; Chowdhuy, Ataharul; Hambly Odame, Helen; Passen, van Annemarie

2018-01-01

This case study assessed local food stakeholders' use of Facebook and Twitter to support interaction and build their networks of innovation in Ontario. Data were collected using Netlytic − an online data mining tool from the social media platforms − and key informant interviews. Findings revealed

The model of social crypto-network

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Марк Миколайович Орел

2015-06-01

Full Text Available The article presents the theoretical model of social network with the enhanced mechanism of privacy policy. It covers the problems arising in the process of implementing the mentioned type of network. There are presented the methods of solving problems arising in the process of building the social network with privacy policy. It was built a theoretical model of social networks with enhanced information protection methods based on information and communication blocks

Animal welfare: a social networks perspective.

Science.gov (United States)

Kleinhappel, Tanja K; John, Elizabeth A; Pike, Thomas W; Wilkinson, Anna; Burman, Oliver H P

2016-01-01

Social network theory provides a useful tool to study complex social relationships in animals. The possibility to look beyond dyadic interactions by considering whole networks of social relationships allows researchers the opportunity to study social groups in more natural ways. As such, network-based analyses provide an informative way to investigate the factors influencing the social environment of group-living animals, and so has direct application to animal welfare. For example, animal groups in captivity are frequently disrupted by separations, reintroductions and/or mixing with unfamiliar individuals and this can lead to social stress and associated aggression. Social network analysis ofanimal groups can help identify the underlying causes of these socially-derived animal welfare concerns. In this review we discuss how this approach can be applied, and how it could be used to identify potential interventions and solutions in the area of animal welfare.

Social Networks and Social Revolution. Evidence from Romania

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Androniciuc Andra

2017-01-01

No other means of communication have had such a rapid development as the Internet, a mediumthat is undoubtedly changing the rules of the political game. In this article, we take a look at theuse of social networks during social and political movements, with particular focus on the 2014,2015 and 2017 Romanian protests. We conclude that social networks alone do not instigaterevolutions, but they are valuable tools for citizens to organize free protests, recruit and trainparticipants, which can lead to further collective action and social change.

Online social support networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Mehta, Neil; Atreja, Ashish

2015-04-01

Peer support groups have a long history and have been shown to improve health outcomes. With the increasing familiarity with online social networks like Facebook and ubiquitous access to the Internet, online social support networks are becoming popular. While studies have shown the benefit of these networks in providing emotional support or meeting informational needs, robust data on improving outcomes such as a decrease in health services utilization or reduction in adverse outcomes is lacking. These networks also pose unique challenges in the areas of patient privacy, funding models, quality of content, and research agendas. Addressing these concerns while creating patient-centred, patient-powered online support networks will help leverage these platforms to complement traditional healthcare delivery models in the current environment of value-based care.

RECOMMENDER SYSTEMS IN SOCIAL NETWORKS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cleomar Valois Batista Jr

2011-12-01

Full Text Available The continued and diversified growth of social networks has changed the way in which users interact with them. With these changes, what once was limited to social contact is now used for exchanging ideas and opinions, creating the need for new features. Users have so much information at their fingertips that they are unable to process it by themselves; hence, the need to develop new tools. Recommender systems were developed to address this need and many techniques were used for different approaches to the problem. To make relevant recommendations, these systems use large sets of data, not taking the social network of the user into consideration. Developing a recommender system that takes into account the social network of the user is another way of tackling the problem. The purpose of this project is to use the theory of six degrees of separation (Watts 2003 amongst users of a social network to enhance existing recommender systems.

Connecting Mobile Users Through Mobile Social Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Faisal Alkhateeb

2012-10-01

Full Text Available Nowadays, social networks become popular with the emerging of web-based social networking services. Recently, several mobile services are developed to connect users to their favourite social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc. However, these services depends upon the existing web-based social networks. In this paper, we present a mobile service for joining groups across communities. The originality of the work is that the framework of the service allows creating and joining social networks that are self-contained for mobile company servers. The service consists of several sub-services such as users invitation, group finding and others. Users, regardless of their disability, can use the service and its sub-services without the need to create their own accounts on social web sites and thus their own groups. We also propose a privacy control policy for mobile social networks.

Self-organization of social hierarchy on interaction networks

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fujie, Ryo; Odagaki, Takashi

2011-01-01

In order to examine the effects of interaction network structures on the self-organization of social hierarchy, we introduce the agent-based model: each individual as on a node of a network has its own power and its internal state changes by fighting with its neighbors and relaxation. We adopt three different networks: regular lattice, small-world network and scale-free network. For the regular lattice, we find the emergence of classes distinguished by the internal state. The transition points where each class emerges are determined analytically, and we show that each class is characterized by the local ranking relative to their neighbors. We also find that the antiferromagnetic-like configuration emerges just above the critical point. For the heterogeneous networks, individuals become winners (or losers) in descending order of the number of their links. By using mean-field analysis, we reveal that the transition point is determined by the maximum degree and the degree distribution in its neighbors

Video Games, Internet and Social Networks: A Study among French School students

Science.gov (United States)

Dany, Lionel; Moreau, Laure; Guillet, Clémentine; Franchina, Carmelo

2016-11-25

Aim : Screen-based media use is gradually becoming a public health issue, especially among young people.Method : A local descriptive observational study was conducted in 11 colleges of the Bouches-du-Rhône department. All middle high school students were asked to fill in a questionnaire comprising questions about their demographic characteristics, their screen-based media use (Internet, video games, social networks), any problematic use (video games and social networks), self-esteem and quality of life.Results : A total of 950 college students (mean age : 12.96 years) participated in the research. The results show a high level and a very diverse screen-based media use. Boys more frequently played video games and girls go more frequently used social networks. The levels of problematic use were relatively low for all middle high school students. The level of problematic video game use was significantly higher in boys, and the level of problematic social network use was higher in girls.Conclusion : Differences in the use of video games or social networks raise the general issue of gender differences in society. This study indicates the need for more specific preventive interventions for screen-based media use. The addictive “nature” of certain practices needs to be studied in more detail.

Unraveling the disease consequences and mechanisms of modular structure in animal social networks

Science.gov (United States)

Sah, Pratha; Leu, Stephan T.; Cross, Paul C.; Hudson, Peter J.; Bansal, Shweta

2017-01-01

Disease risk is a potential cost of group living. Although modular organization is thought to reduce this cost in animal societies, empirical evidence toward this hypothesis has been conflicting. We analyzed empirical social networks from 43 animal species to motivate our study of the epidemiological consequences of modular structure in animal societies. From these empirical studies, we identified the features of interaction patterns associated with network modularity and developed a theoretical network model to investigate when and how subdivisions in social networks influence disease dynamics. Contrary to prior work, we found that disease risk is largely unaffected by modular structure, although social networks beyond a modular threshold experience smaller disease burden and longer disease duration. Our results illustrate that the lowering of disease burden in highly modular social networks is driven by two mechanisms of modular organization: network fragmentation and subgroup cohesion. Highly fragmented social networks with cohesive subgroups are able to structurally trap infections within a few subgroups and also cause a structural delay to the spread of disease outbreaks. Finally, we show that network models incorporating modular structure are necessary only when prior knowledge suggests that interactions within the population are highly subdivided. Otherwise, null networks based on basic knowledge about group size and local contact heterogeneity may be sufficient when data-limited estimates of epidemic consequences are necessary. Overall, our work does not support the hypothesis that modular structure universally mitigates the disease impact of group living.

The Role of Marketing in Local Food Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Margrete Haugum

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Local food producers are often advised to collaborate with other local food producers to jointly participate in marketing and sales activities. Local food producers are often small and must operate many different activities to run their company, so the idea to collaborate may help them to become more efficient. We explore the role of marketing in local food networks through an analysis of marketing strategies and marketing mix in six local food networks in central Norway. When producers participate in food networks, they disconnect from direct relationships with their consumers. The value of this relationship must be considered in addition to costs related to sales and distribution in the network. The networks rely on regional products and regional branding as the main marketing strategy and promote local and localized products.

Social networks and employment in India

OpenAIRE

Tushar K. Nandi

2010-01-01

We investigate the influence of social networks on employment. Using data from India, we estimate the effect of caste based social networks on employment. We use a methodology that allows us to control for several omitted variable biases that often confound network effect. Our results indicate that caste based social networks are important determinant of employment in India. The implication of our findings is that a policy of positive discrimination in labour market for disadvantaged caste is...

Build your own social network laboratory with Social Lab: a tool for research in social media.

Science.gov (United States)

Garaizar, Pablo; Reips, Ulf-Dietrich

2014-06-01

Social networking has surpassed e-mail and instant messaging as the dominant form of online communication (Meeker, Devitt, & Wu, 2010). Currently, all large social networks are proprietary, making it difficult to impossible for researchers to make changes to such networks for the purpose of study design and access to user-generated data from the networks. To address this issue, the authors have developed and present Social Lab, an Internet-based free and open-source social network software system available from http://www.sociallab.es . Having full availability of navigation and communication data in Social Lab allows researchers to investigate behavior in social media on an individual and group level. Automated artificial users ("bots") are available to the researcher to simulate and stimulate social networking situations. These bots respond dynamically to situations as they unfold. The bots can easily be configured with scripts and can be used to experimentally manipulate social networking situations in Social Lab. Examples for setting up, configuring, and using Social Lab as a tool for research in social media are provided.

Information filtering on coupled social networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Nie, Da-Cheng; Zhang, Zi-Ke; Zhou, Jun-Lin; Fu, Yan; Zhang, Kui

2014-01-01

In this paper, based on the coupled social networks (CSN), we propose a hybrid algorithm to nonlinearly integrate both social and behavior information of online users. Filtering algorithm, based on the coupled social networks, considers the effects of both social similarity and personalized preference. Experimental results based on two real datasets, Epinions and Friendfeed, show that the hybrid pattern can not only provide more accurate recommendations, but also enlarge the recommendation coverage while adopting global metric. Further empirical analyses demonstrate that the mutual reinforcement and rich-club phenomenon can also be found in coupled social networks where the identical individuals occupy the core position of the online system. This work may shed some light on the in-depth understanding of the structure and function of coupled social networks.

Handbook of social network technologies and applications

CERN Document Server

Furht, Borko

2010-01-01

Social networking is a concept that has existed for a long time; however, with the explosion of the Internet, social networking has become a tool for people to connect and communicate in ways that were impossible in the past. The recent development of Web 2.0 has provided many new applications, such as Myspace, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The purpose of ""Handbook of Social Networks: Technologies and Applications"" is to provide comprehensive guidelines on the current and future trends in social network technologies and applications in the field of Web-based Social Networks. This handbook includes

The Analysis of Duocentric Social Networks: A Primer.

Science.gov (United States)

Kennedy, David P; Jackson, Grace L; Green, Harold D; Bradbury, Thomas N; Karney, Benjamin R

2015-02-01

Marriages and other intimate partnerships are facilitated or constrained by the social networks within which they are embedded. To date, methods used to assess the social networks of couples have been limited to global ratings of social network characteristics or network data collected from each partner separately. In the current article, the authors offer new tools for expanding on the existing literature by describing methods of collecting and analyzing duocentric social networks, that is, the combined social networks of couples. They provide an overview of the key considerations for measuring duocentric networks, such as how and why to combine separate network interviews with partners into one shared duocentric network, the number of network members to assess, and the implications of different network operationalizations. They illustrate these considerations with analyses of social network data collected from 57 low-income married couples, presenting visualizations and quantitative measures of network composition and structure.

Networks in social policy problems

CERN Document Server

Scotti, marco

2012-01-01

Network science is the key to managing social communities, designing the structure of efficient organizations and planning for sustainable development. This book applies network science to contemporary social policy problems. In the first part, tools of diffusion and team design are deployed to challenges in adoption of ideas and the management of creativity. Ideas, unlike information, are generated and adopted in networks of personal ties. Chapters in the second part tackle problems of power and malfeasance in political and business organizations, where mechanisms in accessing and controlling informal networks often outweigh formal processes. The third part uses ideas from biology and physics to understand global economic and financial crises, ecological depletion and challenges to energy security. Ideal for researchers and policy makers involved in social network analysis, business strategy and economic policy, it deals with issues ranging from what makes public advisories effective to how networks influenc...

Spreading in online social networks: the role of social reinforcement.

Science.gov (United States)

Zheng, Muhua; Lü, Linyuan; Zhao, Ming

2013-07-01

Some epidemic spreading models are usually applied to analyze the propagation of opinions or news. However, the dynamics of epidemic spreading and information or behavior spreading are essentially different in many aspects. Centola's experiments [Science 329, 1194 (2010)] on behavior spreading in online social networks showed that the spreading is faster and broader in regular networks than in random networks. This result contradicts with the former understanding that random networks are preferable for spreading than regular networks. To describe the spreading in online social networks, a unknown-known-approved-exhausted four-status model was proposed, which emphasizes the effect of social reinforcement and assumes that the redundant signals can improve the probability of approval (i.e., the spreading rate). Performing the model on regular and random networks, it is found that our model can well explain the results of Centola's experiments on behavior spreading and some former studies on information spreading in different parameter space. The effects of average degree and network size on behavior spreading process are further analyzed. The results again show the importance of social reinforcement and are accordant with Centola's anticipation that increasing the network size or decreasing the average degree will enlarge the difference of the density of final approved nodes between regular and random networks. Our work complements the former studies on spreading dynamics, especially the spreading in online social networks where the information usually requires individuals' confirmations before being transmitted to others.

Egocentric Social Network Analysis of Pathological Gambling

Science.gov (United States)

Meisel, Matthew K.; Clifton, Allan D.; MacKillop, James; Miller, Joshua D.; Campbell, W. Keith; Goodie, Adam S.

2012-01-01

Aims To apply social network analysis (SNA) to investigate whether frequency and severity of gambling problems were associated with different network characteristics among friends, family, and co-workers. is an innovative way to look at relationships among individuals; the current study was the first to our knowledge to apply SNA to gambling behaviors. Design Egocentric social network analysis was used to formally characterize the relationships between social network characteristics and gambling pathology. Setting Laboratory-based questionnaire and interview administration. Participants Forty frequent gamblers (22 non-pathological gamblers, 18 pathological gamblers) were recruited from the community. Findings The SNA revealed significant social network compositional differences between the two groups: pathological gamblers (PGs) had more gamblers, smokers, and drinkers in their social networks than did nonpathological gamblers (NPGs). PGs had more individuals in their network with whom they personally gambled, smoked, and drank with than those with who were NPG. Network ties were closer to individuals in their networks who gambled, smoked, and drank more frequently. Associations between gambling severity and structural network characteristics were not significant. Conclusions Pathological gambling is associated with compositional but not structural differences in social networks. Pathological gamblers differ from non-pathological gamblers in the number of gamblers, smokers, and drinkers in their social networks. Homophily within the networks also indicates that gamblers tend to be closer with other gamblers. This homophily may serve to reinforce addictive behaviors, and may suggest avenues for future study or intervention. PMID:23072641

Egocentric social network analysis of pathological gambling.

Science.gov (United States)

Meisel, Matthew K; Clifton, Allan D; Mackillop, James; Miller, Joshua D; Campbell, W Keith; Goodie, Adam S

2013-03-01

To apply social network analysis (SNA) to investigate whether frequency and severity of gambling problems were associated with different network characteristics among friends, family and co-workers is an innovative way to look at relationships among individuals; the current study was the first, to our knowledge, to apply SNA to gambling behaviors. Egocentric social network analysis was used to characterize formally the relationships between social network characteristics and gambling pathology. Laboratory-based questionnaire and interview administration. Forty frequent gamblers (22 non-pathological gamblers, 18 pathological gamblers) were recruited from the community. The SNA revealed significant social network compositional differences between the two groups: pathological gamblers (PGs) had more gamblers, smokers and drinkers in their social networks than did non-pathological gamblers (NPGs). PGs had more individuals in their network with whom they personally gambled, smoked and drank than those with who were NPG. Network ties were closer to individuals in their networks who gambled, smoked and drank more frequently. Associations between gambling severity and structural network characteristics were not significant. Pathological gambling is associated with compositional but not structural differences in social networks. Pathological gamblers differ from non-pathological gamblers in the number of gamblers, smokers and drinkers in their social networks. Homophily within the networks also indicates that gamblers tend to be closer with other gamblers. This homophily may serve to reinforce addictive behaviors, and may suggest avenues for future study or intervention. © 2012 The Authors, Addiction © 2012 Society for the Study of Addiction.

Mobile Social Network in a Cultural Context

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Liu, Jun

2010-01-01

, and mobile phone rumours, this study observes that mobile social networks are a way that Chinese people cultivate, maintain and strengthen their guanxi networks. Embedding the reliability of guanxi, the message spreading via mobile communication always enjoys high credibility, while mutual obligation...... of mobile social network in China therefore emanate not only from Information and Communication Technologies, but also from the socio-cultural source - guanxi - deeply rooted in Chinese society.......the chapter “Mobile Social Network in a Cultural Context” examines the guanxi-embedded mobile social network in China. By focusing on three concrete case studies with 56 in-depth interviews, including New Year text message greetings, mobile social networks for job allocations among migrant workers...

Dynamic social networks based on movement

Science.gov (United States)

Scharf, Henry; Hooten, Mevin B.; Fosdick, Bailey K.; Johnson, Devin S.; London, Joshua M.; Durban, John W.

2016-01-01

Network modeling techniques provide a means for quantifying social structure in populations of individuals. Data used to define social connectivity are often expensive to collect and based on case-specific, ad hoc criteria. Moreover, in applications involving animal social networks, collection of these data is often opportunistic and can be invasive. Frequently, the social network of interest for a given population is closely related to the way individuals move. Thus, telemetry data, which are minimally invasive and relatively inexpensive to collect, present an alternative source of information. We develop a framework for using telemetry data to infer social relationships among animals. To achieve this, we propose a Bayesian hierarchical model with an underlying dynamic social network controlling movement of individuals via two mechanisms: an attractive effect and an aligning effect. We demonstrate the model and its ability to accurately identify complex social behavior in simulation, and apply our model to telemetry data arising from killer whales. Using auxiliary information about the study population, we investigate model validity and find the inferred dynamic social network is consistent with killer whale ecology and expert knowledge.

Dissemination Patterns and Associated Network Effects of Sentiments in Social Networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hillmann, Robert; Trier, Matthias

2012-01-01

. The dissemination patterns analyzed in this study consist of network motifs based on triples of actors and the ties among them. These motifs are associated with common social network effects to derive meaningful insights about dissemination activities. The data basis includes several thousand social networks...... with textual messages classified according to embedded positive and negative sentiments. Based on this data, sub-networks are extracted and analyzed with a dynamic network motif analysis to determine dissemination patterns and associated network effects. Results indicate that the emergence of digital social...... networks exhibits a strong tendency towards reciprocity, followed by the dominance of hierarchy as an intermediate step leading to social clustering with hubs and transitivity effects for both positive and negative sentiments to the same extend. Sentiments embedded in exchanged textual messages do only...

Local-area networks in nuclear physics (survey)

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Foteev, V.A.

1987-01-01

The design fundamentals, comparative characteristics, and possibilities of local-area networks as applied to physics experiments are examined. The example of Ethernet is used to explain the operation of local networks, and the results of a study of their functional characteristics are presented. Examples of operational local networks in nuclear physics research and atomic engineering are given: the Japan Research Institute of Atomic Energy, the University of California, and Los Alamos National Laboratory; atomic power plant control in Japan; DECnet and Fastbus; network developments at the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and at the Laboratory of Neutron Physics of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research; and others. It is shown that local networks are important means that considerably increase productivity in data processing

Applications of social media and social network analysis

CERN Document Server

Kazienko, Przemyslaw

2015-01-01

This collection of contributed chapters demonstrates a wide range of applications within two overlapping research domains: social media analysis and social network analysis. Various methodologies were utilized in the twelve individual chapters including static, dynamic and real-time approaches to graph, textual and multimedia data analysis. The topics apply to reputation computation, emotion detection, topic evolution, rumor propagation, evaluation of textual opinions, friend ranking, analysis of public transportation networks, diffusion in dynamic networks, analysis of contributors to commun

Knowledge Production, Urban Locations and the Importance of Local Networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Skytt-Larsen, Christine Benna; Winther, Lars

2015-01-01

This paper analyses the relationship between knowledge production and urban locations in industrial design, a knowledge-intensive business service (KIBS). KIBS concentrate in urban locations. This is often explained by the co-location of client firms and market access in large cities. Recent...... research on knowledge production, however, reveals that knowledge productive networks are significant for both the competitiveness and location of KIBS. Thus, to understand the urban location of industrial design, it is important to analyse how knowledge production is organized within the industry....... Industrial design is concentrated in urban locations, but most of its clients are located elsewhere. Hence, it seems that industrial design firms concentrate in urban locations mainly because their knowledge networks include specific types of formal and informal local social networks....

[Social Networks of Children with Mentally Ill Parents].

Science.gov (United States)

Stiawa, Maja; Kilian, Reinhold

2017-10-01

Social Networks of Children with Mentally Ill Parents Mental illness of parents can be a load situation for children. Supporting social relations might be an important source in such a situation. Social relations can be shown by social network analysis. Studies about social networks and mental health indicate differences regarding structure and potential for support when compared with social networks of healthy individuals. If and how mental illness of parents has an impact on their children's network is widely unknown. This systematic review shows methods and results of studies about social networks of children with mentally ill parents. By systematic search in electronic databases as well as manual search, two studies were found who met the target criteria. Both studies were conducted in the USA. Results of studies indicate that parental mental illness affects the state of mental health and social networks of children. Symptomatology of children changed due to perceived social support of network contacts. Impact of social support and strong network contacts seems to depend on age of children and the family situation. That's why support offers should be adapt to children's age. Focusing on social networks as potential resource for support and needs of the family affected seems appropriate during treatment.

Local area networking handbook

OpenAIRE

O'Hara, Patricia A.

1990-01-01

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. This thesis provides Navy shore based commands with sufficient information on local area networking to (1) decide if they need a LAN, (2) determine what their networking requirements are, and (3) select a LAN that satisfies their requirements. LAN topologies, transmission media, and medium access methods are described. In addition, the OSI reference model for computer networking and the IEEE 802 LAN standards are explained in detail. ...

Privacy Breach Analysis in Social Networks

Science.gov (United States)

Nagle, Frank

This chapter addresses various aspects of analyzing privacy breaches in social networks. We first review literature that defines three types of privacy breaches in social networks: interactive, active, and passive. We then survey the various network anonymization schemes that have been constructed to address these privacy breaches. After exploring these breaches and anonymization schemes, we evaluate a measure for determining the level of anonymity inherent in a network graph based on its topological structure. Finally, we close by emphasizing the difficulty of anonymizing social network data while maintaining usability for research purposes and offering areas for future work.

Social Networks and Welfare in Future Animal Management.

Science.gov (United States)

Koene, Paul; Ipema, Bert

2014-03-17

It may become advantageous to keep human-managed animals in the social network groups to which they have adapted. Data concerning the social networks of farm animal species and their ancestors are scarce but essential to establishing the importance of a natural social network for farmed animal species. Social Network Analysis (SNA) facilitates the characterization of social networking at group, subgroup and individual levels. SNA is currently used for modeling the social behavior and management of wild animals and social welfare of zoo animals. It has been recognized for use with farm animals but has yet to be applied for management purposes. Currently, the main focus is on cattle, because in large groups (poultry), recording of individuals is expensive and the existence of social networks is uncertain due to on-farm restrictions. However, in many cases, a stable social network might be important to individual animal fitness, survival and welfare. For instance, when laying hens are not too densely housed, simple networks may be established. We describe here small social networks in horses, brown bears, laying hens and veal calves to illustrate the importance of measuring social networks among animals managed by humans. Emphasis is placed on the automatic measurement of identity, location, nearest neighbors and nearest neighbor distance for management purposes. It is concluded that social networks are important to the welfare of human-managed animal species and that welfare management based on automatic recordings will become available in the near future.

Social support and social network as intermediary social determinants of dental caries in adolescents.

Science.gov (United States)

Fontanini, Humberto; Marshman, Zoe; Vettore, Mario

2015-04-01

The aim of this study was to investigate the association between intermediary social determinants, namely social support and social network with dental caries in adolescents. An adapted version of the WHO social determinants of health conceptual framework was used to organize structural and intermediary social determinants of dental caries into six blocks including perceived social support and number of social networks. A cross-sectional study was conducted with a representative sample of 542 students between 12 and 14 years of age in public schools located in the city of Dourados, Brazil in 2012. The outcome variables were caries experience (DMFT ≥ 1) and current dental caries (component D of DMFT ≥ 1) recorded by a calibrated dentist. Individual interviews were performed to collect data on perceived social support and numbers of social networks from family and friends and covariates. Multivariate Poisson regressions using hierarchical models were conducted. The prevalence of adolescents with caries experience and current dental caries was 55.2% and 32.1%, respectively. Adolescents with low numbers of social networks and low levels of social support from family (PR 1.47; 95% CI = 1.01-2.14) were more likely to have DMFT ≥ 1. Current dental caries was associated with low numbers of social networks and low levels of social support from family (PR 2.26; 95% CI = 1.15-4.44). Social support and social network were influential psychosocial factors to dental caries in adolescents. This finding requires confirmation in other countries but potentially has implications for programmes to promote oral health. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Social network analysis for startups finding connections on the social web

CERN Document Server

Tsvetovat, Maksim

2011-01-01

Does your startup rely on social network analysis? This concise guide provides a statistical framework to help you identify social processes hidden among the tons of data now available. Social network analysis (SNA) is a discipline that predates Facebook and Twitter by 30 years. Through expert SNA researchers, you''ll learn concepts and techniques for recognizing patterns in social media, political groups, companies, cultural trends, and interpersonal networks. You''ll also learn how to use Python and other open source tools-such as NetworkX, NumPy, and Matplotlib-to gather, analyze, and vis

Opinion evolution in different social acquaintance networks

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Xi; Zhang, Xiao; Wu, Zhan; Wang, Hongwei; Wang, Guohua; Li, Wei

2017-11-01

Social acquaintance networks influenced by social culture and social policy have a great impact on public opinion evolution in daily life. Based on the differences between socio-culture and social policy, three different social acquaintance networks (kinship-priority acquaintance network, independence-priority acquaintance network, and hybrid acquaintance network) incorporating heredity proportion ph and variation proportion pv are proposed in this paper. Numerical experiments are conducted to investigate network topology and different phenomena during opinion evolution, using the Deffuant model. We found that in kinship-priority acquaintance networks, similar to the Chinese traditional acquaintance networks, opinions always achieve fragmentation, resulting in the formation of multiple large clusters and many small clusters due to the fact that individuals believe more in their relatives and live in a relatively closed environment. In independence-priority acquaintance networks, similar to Western acquaintance networks, the results are similar to those in the kinship-priority acquaintance network. In hybrid acquaintance networks, similar to the Chinese modern acquaintance networks, only a few clusters are formed indicating that in modern China, opinions are more likely to reach consensus on a large scale. These results are similar to the opinion evolution phenomena in modern society, proving the rationality and applicability of network models combined with social culture and policy. We also found a threshold curve pv+2 ph=2.05 in the results for the final opinion clusters and evolution time. Above the threshold curve, opinions could easily reach consensus. Based on the above experimental results, a culture-policy-driven mechanism for the opinion dynamic is worth promoting in this paper, that is, opinion dynamics can be driven by different social cultures and policies through the influence of heredity and variation in interpersonal relationship networks. This

Wireless Sensor Network Localization Research

OpenAIRE

Liang Xin

2014-01-01

DV-Hop algorithm is one of the important range-free localization algorithms. It performs better in isotropic density senor networks, however, it brings larger location errors in random distributed networks. According to the localization principle of the DV-Hop algorithm, this paper improves the estimation of average single hop distance by using the Least Equal Square Error, and revises the estimated distance between the unknown node and the anchor node with compensation coefficient considerin...

Contributions of Social Networking for Innovation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Daniela Maria Cartoni

2013-04-01

Full Text Available This paper investigates the role of virtual social networks as a mechanism complementary to formal channels of technology transfer represented by ICT and by private centers of R & D in industry. The strengthening of Web 2.0 has provided the expansion of collaborative tools, in particular the social networks, with a strong influence on the spread of knowledge and innovation. To evaluate the potential of virtual networks, a survey had been conducted to identify and describe the characteristics of some of the major social networks used in Brazil (LinkedIn, Orkut and Twitter. Even this phenomenon is not mature, the study identified the potential and benefits of social networks as informal structures that help in generation of knowledge and innovation diffusion, as a field to be explored and developed.

Privacy in Online Social Networks

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Beye, Michael; Jeckmans, Arjan; Erkin, Zekeriya; Erkin, Zekeriya; Hartel, Pieter H.; Lagendijk, Reginald; Tang, Qiang; Abraham, A.

Online Social Networks (OSNs) have become part of daily life for millions of users. Users building explicit networks that represent their social relationships and often share a wealth of personal information to their own benefit. The potential privacy risks of such behavior are often underestimated

Regional Technolgy Policy and Factors Shaping Local Innovation Networks in Small German Cities

OpenAIRE

Gebauer, Andrea; Nam, Chang Woon; Parsche, Rüdiger

2003-01-01

Local innovation networks have been considered to be particularly important to innovation and technological change and to the growth prospects of regions and cities in Germany. Accordingly, innovation is a process that results from various (economic and social) interactions of different institutions located in a given region. Consequently, when analysing the local (or regional) innovation system, one should not only investigate the (horizontal and vertical) relations among firms but also the ...

Social networking policies in nursing education.

Science.gov (United States)

Frazier, Blake; Culley, Joan M; Hein, Laura C; Williams, Amber; Tavakoli, Abbas S

2014-03-01

Social networking use has increased exponentially in the past few years. A literature review related to social networking and nursing revealed a research gap between nursing practice and education. Although there was information available on the appropriate use of social networking sites, there was limited research on the use of social networking policies within nursing education. The purpose of this study was to identify current use of social media by faculty and students and a need for policies within nursing education at one institution. A survey was developed and administered to nursing students (n = 273) and nursing faculty (n = 33). Inferential statistics included χ², Fisher exact test, t test, and General Linear Model. Cronbach's α was used to assess internal consistency of social media scales. The χ² result indicates that there were associations with the group and several social media items. t Test results indicate significant differences between student and faculty for average of policies are good (P = .0127), policies and discipline (P = .0315), and policy at the study school (P = .0013). General Linear Model analyses revealed significant differences for "friend" a patient with a bond, unprofessional posts, policy, and nursing with class level. Results showed that students and faculty supported the development of a social networking policy.

Father Absence, Social Networks, and Maternal Ratings of Child Health: Evidence from the 2013 Social Networks and Health Information Survey in Mexico.

Science.gov (United States)

Edelblute, Heather B; Altman, Claire E

2018-04-01

Objectives To bridge the literature on the effect of father absence, international migration, and social networks on child health, we assess the association between father absence and maternal ratings of child poor health (MCPH). Next we test whether social networks of immediate and extended kin mediate the relationship between fathers' absence and MCPH. Methods Nested logistic regression models predicting MCPH are estimated using the 2013 Social Networks and Health Information Survey, collected in a migrant-sending community in Guanajuato, Mexico. These unique data distinguish among father absence due to migration versus other reasons and between immediate and extended kin ties. Results Descriptive results indicate that 25% of children with migrant fathers are assessed as having poor health, more often than children with present (15.5%) or otherwise absent fathers (17.5%). In the multivariate models, fathers' absence is not predictive of MCPH. However, the presence of extended kin ties for the mother was associated with approximately a 50% reduction in the odds of MCPH. Additionally, mother's poor self-assessed health was associated with increased odds of MCPH while the presence of a co-resident adult lowered the odds of MCPH. In sensitivity analysis among children with migrant fathers, the receipt of paternal remittances lowered the odds of MCPH. Conclusions for Practice Social networks have a direct and positive association with MCPH rather than mediating the father absence-MCPH relationship. The presence of extended kin ties in the local community is salient for more favorable child health and should be considered in public health interventions aimed at improving child health.

The Strategic Paradox of Social Networks

Science.gov (United States)

2011-03-18

United States claimed to have met online.9 And in 2010, Facebook claimed over 500 million users, which would make the social networking service the...service culture, or occupational specialty. One drawback with social networks concerns the protection of individual privacy. Facebook , for...St ra te gy R es ea rc h Pr oj ec t THE STRATEGIC PARADOX OF SOCIAL NETWORKS BY COLONEL ROBERT COTE United States Marine Corps

The Social Origins of Networks and Diffusion.

Science.gov (United States)

Centola, Damon

2015-03-01

Recent research on social contagion has demonstrated significant effects of network topology on the dynamics of diffusion. However, network topologies are not given a priori. Rather, they are patterns of relations that emerge from individual and structural features of society, such as population composition, group heterogeneity, homophily, and social consolidation. Following Blau and Schwartz, the author develops a model of social network formation that explores how social and structural constraints on tie formation generate emergent social topologies and then explores the effectiveness of these social networks for the dynamics of social diffusion. Results show that, at one extreme, high levels of consolidation can create highly balkanized communities with poor integration of shared norms and practices. As suggested by Blau and Schwartz, reducing consolidation creates more crosscutting circles and significantly improves the dynamics of social diffusion across the population. However, the author finds that further reducing consolidation creates highly intersecting social networks that fail to support the widespread diffusion of norms and practices, indicating that successful social diffusion can depend on moderate to high levels of structural consolidation.

The social support and social network characteristics of smokers in methadone maintenance treatment.

Science.gov (United States)

de Dios, Marcel Alejandro; Stanton, Cassandra A; Caviness, Celeste M; Niaura, Raymond; Stein, Michael

2013-01-01

Previous studies have shown social support and social network variables to be important factors in smoking cessation treatment. Tobacco use is highly prevalent among individuals in methadone maintenance treatment (MMT). However, smoking cessation treatment outcomes in this vulnerable subpopulation have been poor and social support and social network variables may contribute. The current study examined the social support and social network characteristics of 151 MMT smokers involved in a randomized clinical trial of smoking cessation treatments. Participants were 50% women and 78% Caucasian. A high proportion (57%) of MMT smokers had spouses or partners who smoke and over two-thirds of households (68.5%) included at least one smoker. Our sample was characterized by relatively small social networks, but high levels of general social support and quitting support. The number of cigarettes per day was found to be positively associated with the number of smokers in the social network (r = .239, p social support and social networks of smokers in MMT.

Social network analysis and supply chain management

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Raúl Rodríguez Rodríguez

2016-01-01

Full Text Available This paper deals with social network analysis and how it could be integrated within supply chain management from a decision-making point of view. Even though the benefits of using social analysis have are widely accepted at both academic and industry/services context, there is still a lack of solid frameworks that allow decision-makers to connect the usage and obtained results of social network analysis – mainly both information and knowledge flows and derived results- with supply chain management objectives and goals. This paper gives an overview of social network analysis, the main social network analysis metrics, supply chain performance and, finally, it identifies how future frameworks could close the gap and link the results of social network analysis with the supply chain management decision-making processes.

Use intensity of social networks in southern Brazil

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rafaele Matte Wojahn

2017-08-01

Full Text Available A social network implies in connect people. This article aims to identify the use intensity of social network in Southern Brazil. The research was characterized by quantitative approach, descriptive, cross-sectional and survey, with a sample of 372 respondents. To data analysis was used descriptive analysis to characterize the sample, verify the access frequency of social networks and the daily access time, and Pearson’s Correlation to identify the daily access time and the social networks. The results indicated the social network used in more intensity is the Facebook and then Whatsapp, and the access occurs at home. However, all the social networks promote interactions toward users.

The Social Life of Social Networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Robertson, Scott P.; Vatrapu, Ravi; Medina, Richard

2009-01-01

dialogues wished to send other participants. We show a strong integration of the Web 2.0 and new media technologies of social networking, online video, and blogs. Outside of video content, users tended to direct others to groups and applications within the Facebook community, but this homophilous behavior......This paper examines the linkage patterns of people who posted links on the Facebook “walls” of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain over two years prior to the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. Linkage patterns indicate the destinations to which participants in these social networking...

[Social networks and medicine].

Science.gov (United States)

Bastardot, F; Vollenweider, P; Marques-Vidal, P

2015-11-04

Social networks (social media or #SoMe) have entered medical practice within the last few years. These new media--like Twitter or Skype--enrich interactions among physicians (telemedicine), among physicians and patients (virtual consultations) and change the way of teaching medicine. They also entail new ethical, deontological and legal issues: the extension of the consultation area beyond the medical office and the access of information by third parties were recently debated. We develop here a review of some social networks with their characteristics, applications for medicine and limitations, and we offer some recommendations of good practice.

Analysing the Correlation between Social Network Analysis Measures and Performance of Students in Social Network-Based Engineering Education

Science.gov (United States)

Putnik, Goran; Costa, Eric; Alves, Cátia; Castro, Hélio; Varela, Leonilde; Shah, Vaibhav

2016-01-01

Social network-based engineering education (SNEE) is designed and implemented as a model of Education 3.0 paradigm. SNEE represents a new learning methodology, which is based on the concept of social networks and represents an extended model of project-led education. The concept of social networks was applied in the real-life experiment,…

Eigenvector localization as a tool to study small communities in online social networks

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Slanina, František; Konopásek, Z.

2010-01-01

Roč. 13, č. 6 (2010), s. 699-723 ISSN 0219-5259 R&D Projects: GA MŠk OC09078 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z10100520 Keywords : networks * localization Subject RIV: BE - Theoretical Physics Impact factor: 1.213, year: 2010 http://www.worldscinet.com/acs/13/1306/S0219525910002840.html

Neural mechanisms tracking popularity in real-world social networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Zerubavel, Noam; Bearman, Peter S; Weber, Jochen; Ochsner, Kevin N

2015-12-08

Differences in popularity are a key aspect of status in virtually all human groups and shape social interactions within them. Little is known, however, about how we track and neurally represent others' popularity. We addressed this question in two real-world social networks using sociometric methods to quantify popularity. Each group member (perceiver) viewed faces of every other group member (target) while whole-brain functional MRI data were collected. Independent functional localizer tasks were used to identify brain systems supporting affective valuation (ventromedial prefrontal cortex, ventral striatum, amygdala) and social cognition (dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, precuneus, temporoparietal junction), respectively. During the face-viewing task, activity in both types of neural systems tracked targets' sociometric popularity, even when controlling for potential confounds. The target popularity-social cognition system relationship was mediated by valuation system activity, suggesting that observing popular individuals elicits value signals that facilitate understanding their mental states. The target popularity-valuation system relationship was strongest for popular perceivers, suggesting enhanced sensitivity to differences among other group members' popularity. Popular group members also demonstrated greater interpersonal sensitivity by more accurately predicting how their own personalities were perceived by other individuals in the social network. These data offer insights into the mechanisms by which status guides social behavior.

Social networking site (SNS) use by adolescent mothers: Can social support and social capital be enhanced by online social networks? - A structured review of the literature.

Science.gov (United States)

Nolan, Samantha; Hendricks, Joyce; Ferguson, Sally; Towell, Amanda

2017-05-01

to critically appraise the available literature and summarise the evidence relating to adolescent mothers' use of social networking sites in terms of any social support and social capital they may provide and to identify areas for future exploration. social networking sites have been demonstrated to provide social support to marginalised individuals and provide psycho-social benefits to members of such groups. Adolescent mothers are at risk of; social marginalisation; anxiety disorders and depressive symptoms; and poorer health and educational outcomes for their children. Social support has been shown to benefit adolescent mothers thus online mechanisms require consideration. a review of original research articles METHOD: key terms and Boolean operators identified research reports across a 20-year timeframe pertaining to the area of enquiry in: CINAHL, Cochrane Library, Medline, Scopus, ERIC, ProQuest, PsychINFO, Web of Science, Health Collection (Informit) and Google Scholar databases. Eight original research articles met the inclusion criteria for this review. studies demonstrate that adolescent mothers actively search for health information using the Internet and social networking sites, and that social support and social capital can be attributed to their use of specifically created online groups from within targeted health interventions. Use of a message board forum for pregnant and parenting adolescents also demonstrates elements of social support. There are no studies to date pertaining to adolescent mothers' use of globally accessible social networking sites in terms of social support provision and related outcomes. further investigation is warranted to explore the potential benefits of adolescent mothers' use of globally accessible social networking sites in terms of any social support provision and social capital they may provide. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Using Social Networking Sites for Communicable Disease Control: Innovative Contact Tracing or Breach of Confidentiality?

Science.gov (United States)

Mandeville, Kate L; Harris, Matthew; Thomas, H Lucy; Chow, Yimmy; Seng, Claude

2014-04-01

Social media applications such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have attained huge popularity, with more than three billion people and organizations predicted to have a social networking account by 2015. Social media offers a rapid avenue of communication with the public and has potential benefits for communicable disease control and surveillance. However, its application in everyday public health practice raises a number of important issues around confidentiality and autonomy. We report here a case from local level health protection where the friend of an individual with meningococcal septicaemia used a social networking site to notify potential contacts.

Local Area Networks (The Printout).

Science.gov (United States)

Aron, Helen; Balajthy, Ernest

1989-01-01

Describes the Local Area Network (LAN), a project in which students used LAN-based word processing and electronic mail software as the center of a writing process approach. Discusses the advantages and disadvantages of networking. (MM)

Social influence on selection behaviour: Distinguishing local- and global-driven preferential attachment.

Science.gov (United States)

Pan, Xue; Hou, Lei; Liu, Kecheng

2017-01-01

Social influence drives human selection behaviours when numerous objects competing for limited attentions, which leads to the 'rich get richer' dynamics where popular objects tend to get more attentions. However, evidences have been found that, both the global information of the whole system and the local information among one's friends have significant influence over the one's selection. Consequently, a key question raises that, it is the local information or the global information more determinative for one's selection? Here we compare the local-based influence and global-based influence. We show that, the selection behaviour is mainly driven by the local popularity of the objects while the global popularity plays a supplementary role driving the behaviour only when there is little local information for the user to refer to. Thereby, we propose a network model to describe the mechanism of user-object interaction evolution with social influence, where the users perform either local-driven or global-driven preferential attachments to the objects, i.e., the probability of an objects to be selected by a target user is proportional to either its local popularity or global popularity. The simulation suggests that, about 75% of the attachments should be driven by the local popularity to reproduce the empirical observations. It means that, at least in the studied context where users chose businesses on Yelp, there is a probability of 75% for a user to make a selection according to the local popularity. The proposed model and the numerical findings may shed some light on the study of social influence and evolving social systems.

Participation in protected areas: A social network case study in Catalonia, Spain

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Calvet-Mir, L.; Maestre Andrés, S.; Molina, J.L.; van den Bergh, J.C.J.M.

2015-01-01

Local participation of stakeholders in governance of protected areas is considered to be important to natural resource management and biodiversity conservation. Social network analysis (SNA) is a useful tool for analysis because it allows the understanding of stakeholders’ relationships,

Social networks and cooperation in hunter-gatherers.

Science.gov (United States)

Apicella, Coren L; Marlowe, Frank W; Fowler, James H; Christakis, Nicholas A

2012-01-25

Social networks show striking structural regularities, and both theory and evidence suggest that networks may have facilitated the development of large-scale cooperation in humans. Here, we characterize the social networks of the Hadza, a population of hunter-gatherers in Tanzania. We show that Hadza networks have important properties also seen in modernized social networks, including a skewed degree distribution, degree assortativity, transitivity, reciprocity, geographic decay and homophily. We demonstrate that Hadza camps exhibit high between-group and low within-group variation in public goods game donations. Network ties are also more likely between people who give the same amount, and the similarity in cooperative behaviour extends up to two degrees of separation. Social distance appears to be as important as genetic relatedness and physical proximity in explaining assortativity in cooperation. Our results suggest that certain elements of social network structure may have been present at an early point in human history. Also, early humans may have formed ties with both kin and non-kin, based in part on their tendency to cooperate. Social networks may thus have contributed to the emergence of cooperation.

Knowledge Strategies in Using Social Networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Contantin BRĂTIANU

2013-05-01

Full Text Available Knowledge strategy selection is a multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM problem, and requires adequate methods to solve it appropriately. Knowledge strategies are also intrinsically linked to individuals and their ability to comprehend the world and leverage their intellectual assets to respond e!ectively to a fast changing environment. the essential features of social networking sites include but are not limited to: blogging, grouping, networking and instant messaging. Since the social networks facilitate communication and interaction among users, there is a continuous need of researches to examine what are the motives that a!ect the acceptance of usage of the social networks. This study aims at examining the role of the knowledge strategies that individuals employ in using social networks with respect to the overall objective of increasing the knowledge level. For this purpose we have used the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP mathematical model since it allows us a structuring of the overall objective on the main components. For the present research we considered a structure composed of three levels: L1 – the purpose of networking, L2 – strategies used to achieve that purpose, and L3 – activities needed for strategies implementation. At the upper level (L1, the main objective of a person in using social networks is to increase its knowledge level. To obtain the aforementioned objective we considered for the second level (L2 the following strategies: S1 – to learn from other persons; S2 – to make new friends; S3 – to increase the personal experience and visibility. the implementation of these strategies is realized through the following activities considered at the third hierarchy level (L3: A1– joining general social networks (e.g. Facebook, Google+, MySpace, Hi5 etc.; A2– joining professional social networks (e.g. LinkedIn etc.; A3– creating a personal blog (e.g. Blogster, Wordpress etc.; A4– joining online communities of

PRIVACY PROTECTION PROBLEMS IN SOCIAL NETWORKS

OpenAIRE

OKUR, M. Cudi

2011-01-01

Protecting privacy has become a major concern for most social network users because of increased difficulties of controlling the online data. This article presents an assessment of the common privacy related risks of social networking sites. Open and hidden privacy risks of active and passive online profiles are examined and increasing share of social networking in these phenomena is discussed. Inadequacy of available legal and institutional protection is demonstrated and the effectiveness of...

Social network analysis of study environment

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Blaženka Divjak

2010-06-01

Full Text Available Student working environment influences student learning and achievement level. In this respect social aspects of students’ formal and non-formal learning play special role in learning environment. The main research problem of this paper is to find out if students' academic performance influences their position in different students' social networks. Further, there is a need to identify other predictors of this position. In the process of problem solving we use the Social Network Analysis (SNA that is based on the data we collected from the students at the Faculty of Organization and Informatics, University of Zagreb. There are two data samples: in the basic sample N=27 and in the extended sample N=52. We collected data on social-demographic position, academic performance, learning and motivation styles, student status (full-time/part-time, attitudes towards individual and teamwork as well as informal cooperation. Afterwards five different networks (exchange of learning materials, teamwork, informal communication, basic and aggregated social network were constructed. These networks were analyzed with different metrics and the most important were betweenness, closeness and degree centrality. The main result is, firstly, that the position in a social network cannot be forecast only by academic success and, secondly, that part-time students tend to form separate groups that are poorly connected with full-time students. In general, position of a student in social networks in study environment can influence student learning as well as her/his future employability and therefore it is worthwhile to be investigated.

Online Identities and Social Networking

Science.gov (United States)

Maheswaran, Muthucumaru; Ali, Bader; Ozguven, Hatice; Lord, Julien

Online identities play a critical role in the social web that is taking shape on the Internet. Despite many technical proposals for creating and managing online identities, none has received widespread acceptance. Design and implementation of online identities that are socially acceptable on the Internet remains an open problem. This chapter discusses the interplay between online identities and social networking. Online social networks (OSNs) are growing at a rapid pace and has millions of members in them. While the recent trend is to create explicit OSNs such as Facebook and MySpace, we also have implicit OSNs such as interaction graphs created by email and instant messaging services. Explicit OSNs allow users to create profiles and use them to project their identities on the web. There are many interesting identity related issues in the context of social networking including how OSNs help and hinder the definition of online identities.

Network approach for local and community governance of energy: The case of Oxfordshire

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Parag, Yael; Hamilton, Jo; White, Vicki; Hogan, Bernie

2013-01-01

One of the many barriers to the incorporation of local and community actors in emerging energy governance structures and policy delivery mechanisms is the lack of thorough understanding of how they work in practice, and how best to support and develop effective local energy governance. Taking a meso-level perspective and a network approach to governance, this paper sheds some new light on this issue, by focusing on the relation, channels of communication and interactions between low carbon community groups (LCCGs) and other actors. Based on data gathered from LCCGs in Oxfordshire, UK, via network survey and interviews the research maps the relations in terms of the exchanges of information and financial support, and presents a relation-based structure of local energy governance. Analysis reveals the intensity of energy related information exchanges that is taking place at the county level and highlights the centrality of intermediary organization in facilitating information flow. The analysis also identifies actors that are not very dominant in their amount of exchanges, but fill ‘weak-tie’ functions between otherwise disconnected LCCGs or other actors in the network. As an analytical tool the analysis could be useful for various state and non-state actors that want to better understand and support – financially and otherwise – actors that enable energy related local action. - Highlights: • We used social network analysis to examine local and community governance of energy. • We examined information and financial support flow within the network. • Analysis highlights central and peripheral actors in the local governance structure. • The findings highlight the central role intermediary organizations have in local governance structures

Nas teias da economia: o papel das redes sociais e da reciprocidade nos processos locais de desenvolvimento The economic web: social network and reciprocity relations inside local development

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Guilherme Radomsky

2007-08-01

Full Text Available O trabalho aborda o tema das redes sociais de trabalho sob o ângulo das relações de reciprocidade. A partir de um estudo de caso no município de Veranópolis, Rio Grande do Sul, o artigo procura compreender a importância das relações de reciprocidade para a constituição de redes de trabalho ligadas a comerciantes, a indústrias de fusão de aços e a indústrias de calçados e artigos esportivos. Pretende-se demonstrar que, apesar de uma origem social comum, as diferentes redes de trabalho apresentam distintas características no que diz respeito a formas de trabalho, modo de operação e regulação da concorrência entre os empreendimentos. No caso estudado, o conjunto de relações em rede é responsável pelo dinamismo do mercado de trabalho e pela diferenciação da economia local, uma vez que articula os atores que compõem o tecido social e exerce efeitos relevantes para o desenvolvimento do território como um todo.The paper analyses social networks from a point of view that highlights reciprocity relations. Applying a case study in Veranópolis municipality, Rio Grande do Sul, the paper find out to understand the importance of reciprocity relations in the constitution of labour networks engaged to trading, micro fusion industries, shoes and sporting goods industries. The analysis aims to demonstrate that even though the existence of a common social origin, labour networks show different characteristics that refer to labour forms, modes of operation and competition regulation between the entrepreneurships. In this study, the set of network relations is responsible for providing dynamism to the labour market as well as for the differentiation of the local economy, articulating actors who constitute social ties and exercise relevant effects to territorial development as a whole.

Consumer Activities and Reactions to Social Network Marketing

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bistra Vassileva

2017-06-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this paper is to understand consumer behavioural models with respect to their reactions to social network marketing. Theoretical background is focused on online and social network usage, motivations and behaviour. The research goal is to explore consumer reactions to the exposure of social network marketing based on the following criteria: level of brand engagement, word-of-mouth (WOM referral behaviour, and purchase intentions. Consumers are investigated based on their attitudes toward social network marketing and basic socio-demographic covariates using data from a sample size of 700 Bulgarian respondents (age group 21–54 years, Internet users, urban inhabitants. Factor and cluster analyses are applied. It is found that consumers are willing to receive information about brands and companies through social networks. They like to talk in social networks about these brands and companies and to share information as well (factor 2, brand engagement. Internet users are willing to share information received through social network advertising (factor 1, wom referral behaviour but they would not buy a certain brand as a result of brand communication activities in social networks (factor 3, purchase intention. Several practical implications regarding marketing activities through social networks are drawn.

Things online social networking can take away: Reminders of social networking sites undermine the desirability of offline socializing and pleasures.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Shiang-Shiang; Chang, Yevvon Yi-Chi; Chiou, Wen-Bin

2017-04-01

People are beginning to develop symbiotic relationships with social networking sites (SNSs), which provide users with abundant opportunities for social interaction. We contend that if people perceive SNSs as sources of social connection, the idea of SNSs may reduce the desire to pursue offline social activities and offline pleasures. Experiment 1 demonstrated that priming with SNSs was associated with a weakened desirability of offline social activities and an increased inclination to work alone. Felt relatedness mediated the link between SNS primes and reduced desire to engage in offline social activities. Experiment 2 showed that exposure to SNS primes reduced the desirability of offline socializing and lowered the desire for offline pleasurable experiences as well. Moreover, heavy users were more susceptible to this detrimental effect. We provide the first experimental evidence that the idea of online social networking may modulate users' engagement in offline social activities and offline pleasures. Hence, online social networking may satisfy the need for relatedness but undercut the likelihood of reaping enjoyment from offline social life. © 2016 Scandinavian Psychological Associations and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Statistical Models for Social Networks

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Snijders, Tom A. B.; Cook, KS; Massey, DS

2011-01-01

Statistical models for social networks as dependent variables must represent the typical network dependencies between tie variables such as reciprocity, homophily, transitivity, etc. This review first treats models for single (cross-sectionally observed) networks and then for network dynamics. For

Distinct types of eigenvector localization in networks

Science.gov (United States)

Pastor-Satorras, Romualdo; Castellano, Claudio

2016-01-01

The spectral properties of the adjacency matrix provide a trove of information about the structure and function of complex networks. In particular, the largest eigenvalue and its associated principal eigenvector are crucial in the understanding of nodes’ centrality and the unfolding of dynamical processes. Here we show that two distinct types of localization of the principal eigenvector may occur in heterogeneous networks. For synthetic networks with degree distribution P(q) ~ q-γ, localization occurs on the largest hub if γ > 5/2 for γ < 5/2 a new type of localization arises on a mesoscopic subgraph associated with the shell with the largest index in the K-core decomposition. Similar evidence for the existence of distinct localization modes is found in the analysis of real-world networks. Our results open a new perspective on dynamical processes on networks and on a recently proposed alternative measure of node centrality based on the non-backtracking matrix.

Social Support and Social Networks in COPD: A Scoping Review.

Science.gov (United States)

Barton, Christopher; Effing, Tanya W; Cafarella, Paul

2015-01-01

A scoping review was conducted to determine the size and nature of the evidence describing associations between social support and networks on health, management and clinical outcomes amongst patients with COPD. Searches of PubMed, PsychInfo and CINAHL were undertaken for the period 1966-December 2013. A descriptive synthesis of the main findings was undertaken to demonstrate where there is current evidence for associations between social support, networks and health outcomes, and where further research is needed. The search yielded 318 papers of which 287 were excluded after applying selection criteria. Two areas emerged in which there was consistent evidence of benefit of social support; namely mental health and self-efficacy. There was inconsistent evidence for a relationship between perceived social support and quality of life, physical functioning and self-rated health. Hospital readmission was not associated with level of perceived social support. Only a small number of studies (3 articles) have reported on the social network of individuals with COPD. There remains a need to identify the factors that promote and enable social support. In particular, there is a need to further understand the characteristics of social networks within the broader social structural conditions in which COPD patients live and manage their illness.

Opinion evolution in different social acquaintance networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Xi; Zhang, Xiao; Wu, Zhan; Wang, Hongwei; Wang, Guohua; Li, Wei

2017-11-01

Social acquaintance networks influenced by social culture and social policy have a great impact on public opinion evolution in daily life. Based on the differences between socio-culture and social policy, three different social acquaintance networks (kinship-priority acquaintance network, independence-priority acquaintance network, and hybrid acquaintance network) incorporating heredity proportion p h and variation proportion p v are proposed in this paper. Numerical experiments are conducted to investigate network topology and different phenomena during opinion evolution, using the Deffuant model. We found that in kinship-priority acquaintance networks, similar to the Chinese traditional acquaintance networks, opinions always achieve fragmentation, resulting in the formation of multiple large clusters and many small clusters due to the fact that individuals believe more in their relatives and live in a relatively closed environment. In independence-priority acquaintance networks, similar to Western acquaintance networks, the results are similar to those in the kinship-priority acquaintance network. In hybrid acquaintance networks, similar to the Chinese modern acquaintance networks, only a few clusters are formed indicating that in modern China, opinions are more likely to reach consensus on a large scale. These results are similar to the opinion evolution phenomena in modern society, proving the rationality and applicability of network models combined with social culture and policy. We also found a threshold curve p v +2p h =2.05 in the results for the final opinion clusters and evolution time. Above the threshold curve, opinions could easily reach consensus. Based on the above experimental results, a culture-policy-driven mechanism for the opinion dynamic is worth promoting in this paper, that is, opinion dynamics can be driven by different social cultures and policies through the influence of heredity and variation in interpersonal relationship networks. This

Social networks and human development / Redes sociales y desarrollo humano

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sara Gallego Trijueque

2011-10-01

Full Text Available The aim of this work is a brief introduction to the concept of social networks and their importance in society. Social networks have been responsible over the centuries to preserve community values, in addition to being facilitators of social interaction in human development processes, through communication and relationships between individuals.

Decreased functional connectivity in schizophrenia: The relationship between social functioning, social cognition and graph theoretical network measures.

Science.gov (United States)

Erdeniz, Burak; Serin, Emin; İbadi, Yelda; Taş, Cumhur

2017-12-30

Schizophrenia is a complex disorder in which abnormalities in brain connectivity and social functioning play a central role. The aim of this study is to explore small-world network properties, and understand their relationship with social functioning and social cognition in the context of schizophrenia, by testing functional connectivity differences in network properties and its relation to clinical behavioral measures. Resting-state fMRI time series data were acquired from 23 patients diagnosed with schizophrenia and 23 healthy volunteers. The results revealed that patients with schizophrenia show significantly decreased connectivity between a range of brain regions, particularly involving connections among the right orbitofrontal cortex, bilateral putamen and left amygdala. Furthermore, topological properties of functional brain networks in patients with schizophrenia were characterized by reduced path length compared to healthy controls; however, no significant difference was found for clustering coefficient, local efficiency or global efficiency. Additionally, we found that nodal efficiency of the amygdala and the putamen were significantly correlated with the independence-performance subscale of social functioning scale (SFC), and Reading the Mind in the Eyes test; however, the correlations do not survive correction for multiple comparison. The current results help to clarify the relationship between social functioning deficits and topological brain measures in schizophrenia. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Social networks, migration, and HIV testing among Latinos in a new immigrant destination: Insights from a qualitative study.

Science.gov (United States)

Barrington, Clare; Gandhi, Anisha; Gill, Adrienne; Villa Torres, Laura; Brietzke, Maria Priscila; Hightow-Weidman, Lisa

2017-12-03

Latinos in the U.S. are disproportionately affected by HIV and are more likely than non-Latinos to present with a late diagnosis, which delays engagement in HIV care and treatment. Social networks may provide normative influence and social support for HIV testing, but a contextualised understanding of networks is needed in order to maximise these social resources. We conducted qualitative interviews with foreign-born Latino men and transgender women (n = 17) in a new immigrant destination to explore their social networks. Most participants described having smaller social networks after migrating. Networks included both local and transnational ties, but most participants had few close ties. Contextual factors including stigma and geographic dispersion limited the re-construction of networks with close ties after migration. HIV testing was not a common topic of discussion with social network ties. Efforts to improve early uptake of HIV testing among Latino immigrants may benefit from engaging with social networks, but such efforts need to address how the context in which networks operate enables access to testing.

Computational Social Network Analysis

CERN Document Server

Hassanien, Aboul-Ella

2010-01-01

Presents insight into the social behaviour of animals (including the study of animal tracks and learning by members of the same species). This book provides web-based evidence of social interaction, perceptual learning, information granulation and the behaviour of humans and affinities between web-based social networks

Business socialising: women’s social networking perceptions

OpenAIRE

13104802 - Bogaards, Marlene; Mostert, Karina; 10868445 - De Klerk, Saskia

2012-01-01

The primary research objective of the study was to investigate the perceptions of the social networking practices of businesswomen. A non-probability purposive voluntary sample, followed by snowball sampling, was used to select businesswomen (n = 31) living and working in the Gauteng province for in-depth interviews. Various perceptions of businesswomen of social networking practices were identified. A number of networking challenges that businesswomen experience in their social networking ef...

Effective Social Relationship Measurement and Cluster Based Routing in Mobile Opportunistic Networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Zeng, Feng; Zhao, Nan; Li, Wenjia

2017-05-12

In mobile opportunistic networks, the social relationship among nodes has an important impact on data transmission efficiency. Motivated by the strong share ability of "circles of friends" in communication networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Wechat and so on, we take a real-life example to show that social relationships among nodes consist of explicit and implicit parts. The explicit part comes from direct contact among nodes, and the implicit part can be measured through the "circles of friends". We present the definitions of explicit and implicit social relationships between two nodes, adaptive weights of explicit and implicit parts are given according to the contact feature of nodes, and the distributed mechanism is designed to construct the "circles of friends" of nodes, which is used for the calculation of the implicit part of social relationship between nodes. Based on effective measurement of social relationships, we propose a social-based clustering and routing scheme, in which each node selects the nodes with close social relationships to form a local cluster, and the self-control method is used to keep all cluster members always having close relationships with each other. A cluster-based message forwarding mechanism is designed for opportunistic routing, in which each node only forwards the copy of the message to nodes with the destination node as a member of the local cluster. Simulation results show that the proposed social-based clustering and routing outperforms the other classic routing algorithms.

CULTURAL ISSUES OF SOCIAL NETWORKS, THEIR PRINCIPLES AND VALUES IN SOCIAL INCLUSION

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alessandro Marco Rosini

2015-09-01

Full Text Available This article aims to show the importance of a samba school for the local community (in relation to social inclusion and redemption of human values, reflect on the application of this learning created at community to a (organization and discuss the role of people in organizational and cultural strengthening in a social networking environment. It also shows how the use of information technology and communication (ITC can contribute to the evolution of educational scenario of those communities. The scientific method for this is case study, using Delphi technique, where the main community stakeholders are interviewed. Care, respect and consideration for the people who are part of the community are important factors in these social communities. The learning generated by the community and their leaders’ effort are determining for them. ITC can help this learning.

Review of Social Networking Sites' Security and Privacy

OpenAIRE

YANG, SHUN

2015-01-01

Nowadays social media networking has dramatically increased. Social networking sites like Facebook make users create huge amount of profiles and share personal information within networking of different users. Social networking exposes personal information far beyond the group of friends. And that information or data on social media networking could be potential threat to people's information security and privacy. In this review, we are going to view the privacy risks and security problem...

Second-Order Assortative Mixing in Social Networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zhou, Shi; Cox, Ingemar; Hansen, Lars Kai

2017-01-01

In a social network, the number of links of a node, or node degree, is often assumed as a proxy for the node’s importance or prominence within the network. It is known that social networks exhibit the (first-order) assortative mixing, i.e. if two nodes are connected, they tend to have similar node...... degrees, suggesting that people tend to mix with those of comparable prominence. In this paper, we report the second-order assortative mixing in social networks. If two nodes are connected, we measure the degree correlation between their most prominent neighbours, rather than between the two nodes...... themselves. We observe very strong second-order assortative mixing in social networks, often significantly stronger than the first-order assortative mixing. This suggests that if two people interact in a social network, then the importance of the most prominent person each knows is very likely to be the same...

Social networks' openness, university entrepreneurship and differences between regional innovation systems

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Soetanto, D.; Van Geenhuizen, M.S.

2012-01-01

Enhancing the establishment and growth of spin-off firms from university is receiving an increased attention in local and regional policy today. University spin-off firms are typically in short of resources, reason why social networks play a vital role in their early growth. There is however a lack

Organizational Application of Social Networking Information Technologies

Science.gov (United States)

Reppert, Jeffrey R.

2012-01-01

The focus of this qualitative research study using the Delphi method is to provide a framework for leaders to develop their own social networks. By exploring concerns in four areas, leaders may be able to better plan, implement, and manage social networking systems in organizations. The areas addressed are: (a) social networking using…

The Social Network Classroom

Science.gov (United States)

Bunus, Peter

Online social networking is an important part in the everyday life of college students. Despite the increasing popularity of online social networking among students and faculty members, its educational benefits are largely untested. This paper presents our experience in using social networking applications and video content distribution websites as a complement of traditional classroom education. In particular, the solution has been based on effective adaptation, extension and integration of Facebook, Twitter, Blogger YouTube and iTunes services for delivering educational material to students on mobile platforms like iPods and 3 rd generation mobile phones. The goals of the proposed educational platform, described in this paper, are to make the learning experience more engaging, to encourage collaborative work and knowledge sharing among students, and to provide an interactive platform for the educators to reach students and deliver lecture material in a totally new way.

[Characteristics of social supportive network serving the older female sex workers in Qingdao].

Science.gov (United States)

Xu, Y Q; Li, Y F; Jiang, Z X; Zhang, X J; Yuan, X; Zhang, N; Li, X F; Jiang, B F

2016-02-01

To overview the status of social support on older female sex workers (OFSWs) in Qingdao and to better understand the characteristics of this egocentric social support networks. Ucinet 6 software was used to analyze the characteristics of egocentric social networks which involving 400 OFSWs who were recruited by respondent-driven sampling (RDS) method in Qingdao during March 2014 to June. Structural equation model (SEM) was used for data analysis, fitted test and estimation. A total of 400 OFSWs of Qingdao nominated 1 617 social supportive members, and the average size of egocentric social networks of OFSWs was (4.0 ± 1.5). Among all the alter egos (social support network members of the egos), 613 were female sex workers fellows, accounted for the most important part of all the social ties (37.91%). Characteristics of small size and non-relative relationships were seen more obviously among OFSWs with non-local registration and the ratings of emotional support (4.42±2.38) was significantly lower than the tangible support (5.73 ± 1.69) (Psocial support from friends who were also female sex workers. Stronger the joint strength between egos and alters, greater the homogeneity between the two was seen. Tighter relations among the alter egos, higher degree of average social support of the egos were acquired.

Network interventions - How citizens’ social media networks influence their political participation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ohme, Jakob; de Vreese, Claes Holger; Albæk, Erik

Social media platforms are special places of information exposure because they are structured around a user’s social network and not around content, like other news media. Studies could show that news exposure on social media can affect citizens’ political participation due to the personalized......, targeted, & inadvertent exposure. However, previous research did not strongly focus on how the characteristics of a citizens’ social media network might alter this relationship. We tests how political information exposure via three different media channels affects political participation among Danish...... citizens and examine possible moderation effects of users network size, network diversity and the newly introduced parameter of perceived network activity. To this end, a two-wave online survey (n=858) among the Danish population was conducted, applying a smartphone-based media diary study. We find strong...

Social Media and Social Networking Applications for Teaching and Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Yeo, Michelle Mei Ling

2014-01-01

This paper aims to better understand the experiences of the youth and the educators with the tapping of social media like YouTube videos and the social networking application of Facebook for teaching and learning. This paper is interested in appropriating the benefits of leveraging of social media and networking applications like YouTube and…

Conditions for Viral Influence Spreading through Multiplex Correlated Social Networks

Science.gov (United States)

Hu, Yanqing; Havlin, Shlomo; Makse, Hernán A.

2014-04-01

A fundamental problem in network science is to predict how certain individuals are able to initiate new networks to spring up "new ideas." Frequently, these changes in trends are triggered by a few innovators who rapidly impose their ideas through "viral" influence spreading, producing cascades of followers and fragmenting an old network to create a new one. Typical examples include the rise of scientific ideas or abrupt changes in social media, like the rise of Facebook to the detriment of Myspace. How this process arises in practice has not been conclusively demonstrated. Here, we show that a condition for sustaining a viral spreading process is the existence of a multiplex-correlated graph with hidden "influence links." Analytical solutions predict percolation-phase transitions, either abrupt or continuous, where networks are disintegrated through viral cascades of followers, as in empirical data. Our modeling predicts the strict conditions to sustain a large viral spreading via a scaling form of the local correlation function between multilayers, which we also confirm empirically. Ultimately, the theory predicts the conditions for viral cascading in a large class of multiplex networks ranging from social to financial systems and markets.

Social network, social support, and risk of incident stroke: Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study.

Science.gov (United States)

Nagayoshi, Mako; Everson-Rose, Susan A; Iso, Hiroyasu; Mosley, Thomas H; Rose, Kathryn M; Lutsey, Pamela L

2014-10-01

Having a small social network and lack of social support have been associated with incident coronary heart disease; however, epidemiological evidence for incident stroke is limited. We assessed the longitudinal association of a small social network and lack of social support with risk of incident stroke and evaluated whether the association was partly mediated by vital exhaustion and inflammation. The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study measured social network and social support in 13 686 men and women (mean, 57 years; 56% women; 24% black; 76% white) without a history of stroke. Social network was assessed by the 10-item Lubben Social Network Scale and social support by a 16-item Interpersonal Support Evaluation List-Short Form. During a median follow-up of 18.6 years, 905 incident strokes occurred. Relative to participants with a large social network, those with a small social network had a higher risk of stroke (hazard ratio [95% confidence interval], 1.44 [1.02-2.04]) after adjustment for demographics, socioeconomic variables, marital status, behavioral risk factors, and major stroke risk factors. Vital exhaustion, but not inflammation, partly mediated the association between a small social network and incident stroke. Social support was unrelated to incident stroke. In this sample of US community-dwelling men and women, having a small social network was associated with excess risk of incident stroke. As with other cardiovascular conditions, having a small social network may be associated with a modestly increased risk of incident stroke. © 2014 American Heart Association, Inc.

Social networking for well-being

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Steen, M.G.D.; Aarts, O.A.J.; Broekman, C.C.M.T.; Prins, S.C.L.

2011-01-01

In this paper, we present some of the work that is being done in the WeCare project (in the AAL programme). The project’s goal is to introduce social networking services in the lives of older people, in order to improve their well-being. Participation in social networks, both online and ‘in real

Information diffusion in structured online social networks

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Pei; Zhang, Yini; Qiao, Fengcai; Wang, Hui

2015-05-01

Nowadays, due to the word-of-mouth effect, online social networks have been considered to be efficient approaches to conduct viral marketing, which makes it of great importance to understand the diffusion dynamics in online social networks. However, most research on diffusion dynamics in epidemiology and existing social networks cannot be applied directly to characterize online social networks. In this paper, we propose models to characterize the information diffusion in structured online social networks with push-based forwarding mechanism. We introduce the term user influence to characterize the average number of times that messages are browsed which is incurred by a given type user generating a message, and study the diffusion threshold, above which the user influence of generating a message will approach infinity. We conduct simulations and provide the simulation results, which are consistent with the theoretical analysis results perfectly. These results are of use in understanding the diffusion dynamics in online social networks and also critical for advertisers in viral marketing who want to estimate the user influence before posting an advertisement.

Social networks and factor markets

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Abay, Kibrom Araya; Kahsay, Goytom Abraha; Berhane, Guush

In the absence of well-established factor markets, the role of indigenous institutions and social networks can be substantial for mobilizing factors for agricultural production. We investigate the role of an indigenous social network in Ethiopia, the iddir, in facilitating factor market...... transactions among smallholder farmers. Using detailed longitudinal household survey data and employing a difference-in-differences approach, we find that iddir membership improves households’ access to factor markets. Specifically, we find that joining an iddir network improves households’ access to land...

Adoption of Social Networking in Education: A Study of the Use of Social Networks by Higher Education Students in Oman

Science.gov (United States)

Al-Mukhaini, Elham M.; Al-Qayoudhi, Wafa S.; Al-Badi, Ali H.

2014-01-01

The use of social networks is a growing phenomenon, being increasingly important in both private and academic life. Social networks are used as tools to enable users to have social interaction. The use of social networks (SNs) complements and enhances the teaching in traditional classrooms. For example, YouTube, Facebook, wikis, and blogs provide…

Social networking mining, visualization, and security

CERN Document Server

Dehuri, Satchidananda; Wang, Gi-Nam

2014-01-01

With the proliferation of social media and on-line communities in networked world a large gamut of data has been collected and stored in databases. The rate at which such data is stored is growing at a phenomenal rate and pushing the classical methods of data analysis to their limits. This book presents an integrated framework of recent empirical and theoretical research on social network analysis based on a wide range of techniques from various disciplines like data mining, social sciences, mathematics, statistics, physics, network science, machine learning with visualization techniques, and security. The book illustrates the potential of multi-disciplinary techniques in various real life problems and intends to motivate researchers in social network analysis to design more effective tools by integrating swarm intelligence and data mining.  

Online and Offline Social Networks: Use of Social Networking Sites by Emerging Adults

Science.gov (United States)

Subrahmanyam, Kaveri; Reich, Stephanie M.; Waechter, Natalia; Espinoza, Guadalupe

2008-01-01

Social networking sites (e.g., MySpace and Facebook) are popular online communication forms among adolescents and emerging adults. Yet little is known about young people's activities on these sites and how their networks of "friends" relate to their other online (e.g., instant messaging) and offline networks. In this study, college students…

Brain networks of social comparison.

Science.gov (United States)

Kedia, Gayannée; Lindner, Michael; Mussweiler, Thomas; Ihssen, Niklas; Linden, David E J

2013-03-27

Social comparison, that is, the process of comparing oneself to other people, is a ubiquitous social cognitive mechanism; however, so far its neural correlates have remained unknown. The present study tested the hypothesis that social comparisons are supported by partly dissociated networks, depending on whether the dimension under comparison concerns a physical or a psychological attribute. We measured brain activity with functional MRI, whereas participants were comparing their own height or intelligence to that of individuals they personally know. Height comparisons were associated with higher activity in a frontoparietal network involved in spatial and numerical cognition. Conversely, intelligence comparisons recruited a network of midline areas that have been previously implicated in the attribution of mental states to oneself and others (Theory of mind). These findings suggest that social comparisons rely on diverse domain-specific mechanisms rather than on one unitary process.

Activity-Driven Influence Maximization in Social Networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kumar, Rohit; Saleem, Muhammad Aamir; Calders, Toon

2017-01-01

-driven approach based on the identification of influence propagation patterns. In the first work, we identify so-called information-channels to model potential pathways for information spread, while the second work exploits how users in a location-based social network check in to locations in order to identify...... influential locations. To make our algorithms scalable, approximate versions based on sketching techniques from the data streams domain have been developed. Experiments show that in this way it is possible to efficiently find good seed sets for influence propagation in social networks.......Interaction networks consist of a static graph with a timestamped list of edges over which interaction took place. Examples of interaction networks are social networks whose users interact with each other through messages or location-based social networks where people interact by checking...

Social network analysis community detection and evolution

CERN Document Server

Missaoui, Rokia

2015-01-01

This book is devoted to recent progress in social network analysis with a high focus on community detection and evolution. The eleven chapters cover the identification of cohesive groups, core components and key players either in static or dynamic networks of different kinds and levels of heterogeneity. Other important topics in social network analysis such as influential detection and maximization, information propagation, user behavior analysis, as well as network modeling and visualization are also presented. Many studies are validated through real social networks such as Twitter. This edit

Social networks and bronchial asthma.

Science.gov (United States)

D'Amato, Gennaro; Cecchi, Lorenzo; Liccardi, Gennaro; D'Amato, Maria; Stanghellini, Giovanni

2013-02-01

To focus on both positive and negative aspects of the interaction between asthmatic patients and the social networks, and to highlight the need of a psychological approach in some individuals to integrate pharmacological treatment is the purpose of review. There is evidence that in some asthmatic patients, the excessive use of social networks can induce depression and stress triggering bronchial obstruction, whereas in others their rational use can induce beneficial effects in terms of asthma management. The increasing asthma prevalence in developed countries seen at the end of last century has raised concern for the considerable burden of this disease on society as well as individuals. Bronchial asthma is a disease in which psychological implications play a role in increasing or in reducing the severity of bronchial obstruction. Internet and, in particular, social media are increasingly a part of daily life of both young and adult people, thus allowing virtual relationships with peers sharing similar interests and goals. Although social network users often disclose more about themselves online than they do in person, there might be a risk for adolescents and for sensitive individuals, who can be negatively influenced by an incorrect use. However, although some studies show an increased risk of depression, other observations suggest beneficial effects of social networks by enhancing communication, social connection and self-esteem.

Mining social networks and security informatics

CERN Document Server

Özyer, Tansel; Rokne, Jon; Khoury, Suheil

2013-01-01

Crime, terrorism and security are in the forefront of current societal concerns. This edited volume presents research based on social network techniques showing how data from crime and terror networks can be analyzed and how information can be extracted. The topics covered include crime data mining and visualization; organized crime detection; crime network visualization; computational criminology; aspects of terror network analyses and threat prediction including cyberterrorism and the related area of dark web; privacy issues in social networks; security informatics; graph algorithms for soci

A Social Networks in Education

Science.gov (United States)

Klimova, Blanka; Poulova, Petra

2015-01-01

At present social networks are becoming important in all areas of human activities. They are simply part and parcel of everyday life. They are mostly used for advertising, but they have already found their way into education. The future potential of social networks is high as it can be seen from their statistics on a daily, monthly or yearly…

Social Networking Goes to School

Science.gov (United States)

Davis, Michelle R.

2010-01-01

Just a few years ago, social networking meant little more to educators than the headache of determining whether to penalize students for inappropriate activities captured on Facebook or MySpace. Now, teachers and students have an array of social-networking sites and tools--from Ning to VoiceThread and Second Life--to draw on for such serious uses…

Do social networks influence small-scale fishermen's enforcement of sea tenure?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kara Stevens

Full Text Available Resource systems with enforced rules and strong monitoring systems typically have more predictable resource abundance, which can confer economic and social benefits to local communities. Co-management regimes demonstrate better social and ecological outcomes, but require an active role by community members in management activities, such as monitoring and enforcement. Previous work has emphasized understanding what makes fishermen comply with rules. This research takes a different approach to understand what influences an individual to enforce rules, particularly sea tenure. We conducted interviews and used multiple regression and Akaike's Information Criteria model selection to evaluate the effect of social networks, food security, recent catch success, fisherman's age and personal gear investment on individual's enforcement of sea tenure. We found that fishermen's enforcement of sea tenure declined between the two time periods measured and that social networks, age, food security, and changes in gear investment explained enforcement behavior across three different communities on Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast, an area undergoing rapid globalization.

Information and influence propagation in social networks

CERN Document Server

Chen, Wei; Lakshmanan, Laks V S

2013-01-01

Research on social networks has exploded over the last decade. To a large extent, this has been fueled by the spectacular growth of social media and online social networking sites, which continue growing at a very fast pace, as well as by the increasing availability of very large social network datasets for purposes of research. A rich body of this research has been devoted to the analysis of the propagation of information, influence, innovations, infections, practices and customs through networks. Can we build models to explain the way these propagations occur? How can we validate our models

[Social networks in drinking behaviors among Japanese: support network, drinking network, and intervening network].

Science.gov (United States)

Yoshihara, Chika; Shimizu, Shinji

2005-10-01

The national representative sample was analyzed to examine the relationship between respondents' drinking practice and the social network which was constructed of three different types of network: support network, drinking network, and intervening network. Non-parametric statistical analysis was conducted with chi square method and ANOVA analysis, due to the risk of small samples in some basic tabulation cells. The main results are as follows: (1) In the support network of workplace associates, moderate drinkers enjoyed much more sociable support care than both nondrinkers and hard drinkers, which might suggest a similar effect as the French paradox. Meanwhile in the familial and kinship network, the more intervening care support was provided, the harder respondents' drinking practice. (2) The drinking network among Japanese people for both sexes is likely to be convergent upon certain types of network categories and not decentralized in various categories. This might reflect of the drinking culture of Japan, which permits people to drink everyday as a practice, especially male drinkers. Subsequently, solitary drinking is not optional for female drinkers. (3) Intervening network analysis showed that the harder the respondents' drinking practices, the more frequently their drinking behaviors were checked in almost all the categories of network. A rather complicated gender double-standard was found in the network of hard drinkers with their friends, particularly for female drinkers. Medical professionals played a similar intervening role for men as family and kinship networks but to a less degree than friends for females. The social network is considerably associated with respondents' drinking, providing both sociability for moderate drinkers and intervention for hard drinkers, depending on network categories. To minimize the risk of hard drinking and advance self-healthy drinking there should be more research development on drinking practice and the social network.

Mining of the social network extraction

Science.gov (United States)

Nasution, M. K. M.; Hardi, M.; Syah, R.

2017-01-01

The use of Web as social media is steadily gaining ground in the study of social actor behaviour. However, information in Web can be interpreted in accordance with the ability of the method such as superficial methods for extracting social networks. Each method however has features and drawbacks: it cannot reveal the behaviour of social actors, but it has the hidden information about them. Therefore, this paper aims to reveal such information in the social networks mining. Social behaviour could be expressed through a set of words extracted from the list of snippets.

SocialBrowsing: Integrating Social Networks and Web Browsing

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Golbeck, Jennifer; Wasser, Michael M

2007-01-01

.... The extension is paired with services provided by social networking websites, analyzes the page's contents, and adds tooltips and highlighting to indicate when there is relevant social information...

Social Software: Participants' Experience Using Social Networking for Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Batchelder, Cecil W.

2010-01-01

Social networking tools used in learning provides instructional design with tools for transformative change in education. This study focused on defining the meanings and essences of social networking through the lived common experiences of 7 college students. The problem of the study was a lack of learner voice in understanding the value of social…

EXPLORING THE ROLE OF BUSINESS SOCIAL NETWORKING FOR ORGANIZATIONS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Damjana Jerman

2015-01-01

Full Text Available This article explores the relationship between communication, with the emphasis on public relations, and social network perspectives. What, then, does social networking for business mean in communication, particularly in public relations? This paper argues that business social networking play an important role in improving organizations communications. The goal of our paper is to identify the basic characteristics of social networks and its role for public relations for the effective implementation of social networking initiatives and tools in the workplace. Business social networking tools such as Facebook and LinkedIn are being used by organizations to reach the corporate objectives and to create a positive company image. Specific social networks, such the personalised networks of influence, are perceived to be one of the main strategic resources for organizations.

Social power and opinion formation in complex networks

Science.gov (United States)

Jalili, Mahdi

2013-02-01

In this paper we investigate the effects of social power on the evolution of opinions in model networks as well as in a number of real social networks. A continuous opinion formation model is considered and the analysis is performed through numerical simulation. Social power is given to a proportion of agents selected either randomly or based on their degrees. As artificial network structures, we consider scale-free networks constructed through preferential attachment and Watts-Strogatz networks. Numerical simulations show that scale-free networks with degree-based social power on the hub nodes have an optimal case where the largest number of the nodes reaches a consensus. However, given power to a random selection of nodes could not improve consensus properties. Introducing social power in Watts-Strogatz networks could not significantly change the consensus profile.

Internet gaming disorder, social network disorder and laterality: handedness relates to pathological use of social networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Bouna-Pyrrou, Polyxeni; Mühle, Christiane; Kornhuber, Johannes; Lenz, Bernd

2015-08-01

The internet age bears new challenges that include health risks. It is agreed that excessive internet use may reach pathological levels. However, the concept of internet addiction lacks specificity and, therefore, warrants studies on its diagnostic and etiologic classification. This study was conducted to characterize the novel DSM-5 criteria for internet gaming disorder and the adapted criteria for the "social network disorder". Based on the established association of handedness and substance use disorders, we also explored whether internet use related to laterality. For this study, 3,287 volunteers participated in the online survey and gave particulars concerning their internet use in general, internet gaming and use of social networks, laterality markers (hand, foot, eye, ear, rotational preference in gymnastics, and head turning asymmetry) and health status. Of the participants, 1.1 % fulfilled the criteria for internet gaming disorder, and 1.8 % fulfilled the criteria for social network disorder. The applied criteria were highly correlated with the time spent on the respective internet activities (p social networks (p ≤ 4 × 10(-2)). The provided criteria proved to be user-friendly, comprehensible and well accepted. The results contribute to a better understanding of pathological internet gaming and social network use and provide evidence that biological markers of substance use disorders are involved in internet addiction.

"I Don't Know What Fun Is": Examining the Intersection of Social Capital, Social Networks, and Social Recovery.

Science.gov (United States)

Boeri, Miriam; Gardner, Megan; Gerken, Erin; Ross, Melissa; Wheeler, Jack

The purpose of this paper is to understand how people with problematic drug use access positive social capital. Social capital is defined as relations that provide valuable resources to individuals through participation in social networks. People with low socioeconomic status remain at a disadvantage for acquiring positive social capital, a component of recovery capital. The concept of social recovery emphasises the relational processes of recovery. In-depth life history data were collected from 29 individuals who used heroin, cocaine, crack, or methamphetamine for at least five years, have less than a high school education, and unstable employment and housing. Qualitative data were coded for social networks accessed throughout the life course, distinguished by bonding, bridging and linking social capital. Social networks included drug treatment programs; non-drug-using family and friends; religious/spiritual groups; workplace networks, and social clubs/activities. Bonding and/or bridging social capital were acquired through treatment, family and friends, religious/spiritual groups, workplaces, and social clubs. Linking social capital was not acquired through any social networks available, and many barriers to accessing mainstream social networks were found. This is a small study conducted in the US. A greater focus on social recovery is needed to achieve sustained recovery for individuals lacking access to and engagement in mainstream social networks. Social recovery is proposed as an analytical tool as well as for developing prevention, intervention, and treatment strategies.

Service Demand Discovery Mechanism for Mobile Social Networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Wu, Dapeng; Yan, Junjie; Wang, Honggang; Wang, Ruyan

2016-11-23

In the last few years, the service demand for wireless data over mobile networks has continually been soaring at a rapid pace. Thereinto, in Mobile Social Networks (MSNs), users can discover adjacent users for establishing temporary local connection and thus sharing already downloaded contents with each other to offload the service demand. Due to the partitioned topology, intermittent connection and social feature in such a network, the service demand discovery is challenging. In particular, the service demand discovery is exploited to identify the best relay user through the service registration, service selection and service activation. In order to maximize the utilization of limited network resources, a hybrid service demand discovery architecture, such as a Virtual Dictionary User (VDU) is proposed in this paper. Based on the historical data of movement, users can discover their relationships with others. Subsequently, according to the users activity, VDU is selected to facilitate the service registration procedure. Further, the service information outside of a home community can be obtained through the Global Active User (GAU) to support the service selection. To provide the Quality of Service (QoS), the Service Providing User (SPU) is chosen among multiple candidates. Numerical results show that, when compared with other classical service algorithms, the proposed scheme can improve the successful service demand discovery ratio by 25% under reduced overheads.

Social networks of patients with psychosis: a systematic review.

Science.gov (United States)

Palumbo, Claudia; Volpe, Umberto; Matanov, Aleksandra; Priebe, Stefan; Giacco, Domenico

2015-10-12

Social networks are important for mental health outcomes as they can mobilise resources and help individuals to cope with social stressors. Individuals with psychosis may have specific difficulties in establishing and maintaining social relationships which impacts on their well-being and quality of life. There has been a growing interest in developing social network interventions for patients with psychotic disorders. A systematic literature review was conducted to investigate the size of social networks of patients with psychotic disorders, as well as their friendship networks. A systematic electronic search was carried out in MEDLINE, EMBASE and PsychINFO databases using a combination of search terms relating to 'social network', 'friendship' and 'psychotic disorder'. The search identified 23 relevant papers. Out of them, 20 reported patient social network size. Four papers reported the mean number of friends in addition to whole network size, while three further papers focused exclusively on the number of friends. Findings varied substantially across the studies, with a weighted mean size of 11.7 individuals for whole social networks and 3.4 individuals for friendship networks. On average, 43.1 % of the whole social network was composed of family members, while friends accounted for 26.5 %. Studies assessing whole social network size and friendship networks of people with psychosis are difficult to compare as different concepts and methods of assessment were applied. The extent of the overlap between different social roles assessed in the networks was not always clear. Greater conceptual and methodological clarity is needed in order to help the development of effective strategies to increase social resources of patients with psychosis.

Epidemic outbreaks in growing scale-free networks with local structure

Science.gov (United States)

Ni, Shunjiang; Weng, Wenguo; Shen, Shifei; Fan, Weicheng

2008-09-01

The class of generative models has already attracted considerable interest from researchers in recent years and much expanded the original ideas described in BA model. Most of these models assume that only one node per time step joins the network. In this paper, we grow the network by adding n interconnected nodes as a local structure into the network at each time step with each new node emanating m new edges linking the node to the preexisting network by preferential attachment. This successfully generates key features observed in social networks. These include power-law degree distribution pk∼k, where μ=(n-1)/m is a tuning parameter defined as the modularity strength of the network, nontrivial clustering, assortative mixing, and modular structure. Moreover, all these features are dependent in a similar way on the parameter μ. We then study the susceptible-infected epidemics on this network with identical infectivity, and find that the initial epidemic behavior is governed by both of the infection scheme and the network structure, especially the modularity strength. The modularity of the network makes the spreading velocity much lower than that of the BA model. On the other hand, increasing the modularity strength will accelerate the propagation velocity.

Social Networking Sites and Addiction: Ten Lessons Learned.

Science.gov (United States)

Kuss, Daria J; Griffiths, Mark D

2017-03-17

Online social networking sites (SNSs) have gained increasing popularity in the last decade, with individuals engaging in SNSs to connect with others who share similar interests. The perceived need to be online may result in compulsive use of SNSs, which in extreme cases may result in symptoms and consequences traditionally associated with substance-related addictions. In order to present new insights into online social networking and addiction, in this paper, 10 lessons learned concerning online social networking sites and addiction based on the insights derived from recent empirical research will be presented. These are: (i) social networking and social media use are not the same; (ii) social networking is eclectic; (iii) social networking is a way of being; (iv) individuals can become addicted to using social networking sites; (v) Facebook addiction is only one example of SNS addiction; (vi) fear of missing out (FOMO) may be part of SNS addiction; (vii) smartphone addiction may be part of SNS addiction; (viii) nomophobia may be part of SNS addiction; (ix) there are sociodemographic differences in SNS addiction; and (x) there are methodological problems with research to date. These are discussed in turn. Recommendations for research and clinical applications are provided.

Effect of local information within network layers on the evolution of cooperation in duplex public goods games

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhou, Yifeng; Zheng, Xiaoming; Wu, Weiwei

2015-01-01

Traditional works of public goods game (PGG) are often studied in simplex networks where agents play games through the same type of social interactions. In order to promote cooperation against the defection in PGGs in simplex network environment, many mechanisms have been proposed from different perspectives, such as the volunteering mechanisms, and the punishment and reward approaches. However, due to diverse types of interactions between agents in reality, the study of PGG should also consider the characteristic of multiplexity of networks. Hence, we firstly model the public goods game in the duplex network (for simplification of analysis, the duplex network is considered), in which agents have two types of social interactions, and thus the network is modeled as two network layers. This type of PGG is naturally named as duplex public goods game (D-PGG), in which agents can select one of the network layers to allocate their limited resources. Then for the new game environment (D-PGG), we propose a novel perspective to promote cooperation: degrading the information integrity, i.e., agents get information just from one network layer (local information) rather than from the whole duplex network (global information) in the evolution process. Finally, through theoretical analyses and simulations, we find that if agents imitate based on the local information of the payoff in the evolution, cooperation can be generally promoted; and the extent of promotion depends on both the network structure and the similarity of the network layers

Composite Social Network for Predicting Mobile Apps Installation

Science.gov (United States)

2011-06-02

Social network tools (such as the Facebook app and the Twitter app) can observe users’ online friendship network . In this work, our key idea is...the friendship network from phones by collecting data from social networking apps such as the Facebook and Twitter apps. We summarize all the networks ...ar X iv :1 10 6. 03 59 v1 [ cs .S I] 2 J un 2 01 1 Composite Social Network for Predicting Mobile Apps Installation Wei Pan

Finding local communities in protein networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Voevodski, Konstantin; Teng, Shang-Hua; Xia, Yu

2009-09-18

Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) play fundamental roles in nearly all biological processes, and provide major insights into the inner workings of cells. A vast amount of PPI data for various organisms is available from BioGRID and other sources. The identification of communities in PPI networks is of great interest because they often reveal previously unknown functional ties between proteins. A large number of global clustering algorithms have been applied to protein networks, where the entire network is partitioned into clusters. Here we take a different approach by looking for local communities in PPI networks. We develop a tool, named Local Protein Community Finder, which quickly finds a community close to a queried protein in any network available from BioGRID or specified by the user. Our tool uses two new local clustering algorithms Nibble and PageRank-Nibble, which look for a good cluster among the most popular destinations of a short random walk from the queried vertex. The quality of a cluster is determined by proportion of outgoing edges, known as conductance, which is a relative measure particularly useful in undersampled networks. We show that the two local clustering algorithms find communities that not only form excellent clusters, but are also likely to be biologically relevant functional components. We compare the performance of Nibble and PageRank-Nibble to other popular and effective graph partitioning algorithms, and show that they find better clusters in the graph. Moreover, Nibble and PageRank-Nibble find communities that are more functionally coherent. The Local Protein Community Finder, accessible at http://xialab.bu.edu/resources/lpcf, allows the user to quickly find a high-quality community close to a queried protein in any network available from BioGRID or specified by the user. We show that the communities found by our tool form good clusters and are functionally coherent, making our application useful for biologists who wish to

Finding local communities in protein networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Teng Shang-Hua

2009-09-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Protein-protein interactions (PPIs play fundamental roles in nearly all biological processes, and provide major insights into the inner workings of cells. A vast amount of PPI data for various organisms is available from BioGRID and other sources. The identification of communities in PPI networks is of great interest because they often reveal previously unknown functional ties between proteins. A large number of global clustering algorithms have been applied to protein networks, where the entire network is partitioned into clusters. Here we take a different approach by looking for local communities in PPI networks. Results We develop a tool, named Local Protein Community Finder, which quickly finds a community close to a queried protein in any network available from BioGRID or specified by the user. Our tool uses two new local clustering algorithms Nibble and PageRank-Nibble, which look for a good cluster among the most popular destinations of a short random walk from the queried vertex. The quality of a cluster is determined by proportion of outgoing edges, known as conductance, which is a relative measure particularly useful in undersampled networks. We show that the two local clustering algorithms find communities that not only form excellent clusters, but are also likely to be biologically relevant functional components. We compare the performance of Nibble and PageRank-Nibble to other popular and effective graph partitioning algorithms, and show that they find better clusters in the graph. Moreover, Nibble and PageRank-Nibble find communities that are more functionally coherent. Conclusion The Local Protein Community Finder, accessible at http://xialab.bu.edu/resources/lpcf, allows the user to quickly find a high-quality community close to a queried protein in any network available from BioGRID or specified by the user. We show that the communities found by our tool form good clusters and are functionally coherent

How can social network analysis contribute to social behavior research in applied ethology?

Science.gov (United States)

Makagon, Maja M; McCowan, Brenda; Mench, Joy A

2012-05-01

Social network analysis is increasingly used by behavioral ecologists and primatologists to describe the patterns and quality of interactions among individuals. We provide an overview of this methodology, with examples illustrating how it can be used to study social behavior in applied contexts. Like most kinds of social interaction analyses, social network analysis provides information about direct relationships (e.g. dominant-subordinate relationships). However, it also generates a more global model of social organization that determines how individual patterns of social interaction relate to individual and group characteristics. A particular strength of this approach is that it provides standardized mathematical methods for calculating metrics of sociality across levels of social organization, from the population and group levels to the individual level. At the group level these metrics can be used to track changes in social network structures over time, evaluate the effect of the environment on social network structure, or compare social structures across groups, populations or species. At the individual level, the metrics allow quantification of the heterogeneity of social experience within groups and identification of individuals who may play especially important roles in maintaining social stability or information flow throughout the network.

Common neighbours and the local-community-paradigm for topological link prediction in bipartite networks

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Daminelli, Simone; Thomas, Josephine Maria; Durán, Claudio; Vittorio Cannistraci, Carlo

2015-01-01

Bipartite networks are powerful descriptions of complex systems characterized by two different classes of nodes and connections allowed only across but not within the two classes. Unveiling physical principles, building theories and suggesting physical models to predict bipartite links such as product-consumer connections in recommendation systems or drug–target interactions in molecular networks can provide priceless information to improve e-commerce or to accelerate pharmaceutical research. The prediction of nonobserved connections starting from those already present in the topology of a network is known as the link-prediction problem. It represents an important subject both in many-body interaction theory in physics and in new algorithms for applied tools in computer science. The rationale is that the existing connectivity structure of a network can suggest where new connections can appear with higher likelihood in an evolving network, or where nonobserved connections are missing in a partially known network. Surprisingly, current complex network theory presents a theoretical bottle-neck: a general framework for local-based link prediction directly in the bipartite domain is missing. Here, we overcome this theoretical obstacle and present a formal definition of common neighbour index and local-community-paradigm (LCP) for bipartite networks. As a consequence, we are able to introduce the first node-neighbourhood-based and LCP-based models for topological link prediction that utilize the bipartite domain. We performed link prediction evaluations in several networks of different size and of disparate origin, including technological, social and biological systems. Our models significantly improve topological prediction in many bipartite networks because they exploit local physical driving-forces that participate in the formation and organization of many real-world bipartite networks. Furthermore, we present a local-based formalism that allows to intuitively

Common neighbours and the local-community-paradigm for topological link prediction in bipartite networks

Science.gov (United States)

Daminelli, Simone; Thomas, Josephine Maria; Durán, Claudio; Vittorio Cannistraci, Carlo

2015-11-01

Bipartite networks are powerful descriptions of complex systems characterized by two different classes of nodes and connections allowed only across but not within the two classes. Unveiling physical principles, building theories and suggesting physical models to predict bipartite links such as product-consumer connections in recommendation systems or drug-target interactions in molecular networks can provide priceless information to improve e-commerce or to accelerate pharmaceutical research. The prediction of nonobserved connections starting from those already present in the topology of a network is known as the link-prediction problem. It represents an important subject both in many-body interaction theory in physics and in new algorithms for applied tools in computer science. The rationale is that the existing connectivity structure of a network can suggest where new connections can appear with higher likelihood in an evolving network, or where nonobserved connections are missing in a partially known network. Surprisingly, current complex network theory presents a theoretical bottle-neck: a general framework for local-based link prediction directly in the bipartite domain is missing. Here, we overcome this theoretical obstacle and present a formal definition of common neighbour index and local-community-paradigm (LCP) for bipartite networks. As a consequence, we are able to introduce the first node-neighbourhood-based and LCP-based models for topological link prediction that utilize the bipartite domain. We performed link prediction evaluations in several networks of different size and of disparate origin, including technological, social and biological systems. Our models significantly improve topological prediction in many bipartite networks because they exploit local physical driving-forces that participate in the formation and organization of many real-world bipartite networks. Furthermore, we present a local-based formalism that allows to intuitively

The structural and functional brain networks that support human social networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Noonan, M P; Mars, R B; Sallet, J; Dunbar, R I M; Fellows, L K

2018-02-20

Social skills rely on a specific set of cognitive processes, raising the possibility that individual differences in social networks are related to differences in specific brain structural and functional networks. Here, we tested this hypothesis with multimodality neuroimaging. With diffusion MRI (DMRI), we showed that differences in structural integrity of particular white matter (WM) tracts, including cingulum bundle, extreme capsule and arcuate fasciculus were associated with an individual's social network size (SNS). A voxel-based morphology analysis demonstrated correlations between gray matter (GM) volume and SNS in limbic and temporal lobe regions. These structural changes co-occured with functional network differences. As a function of SNS, dorsomedial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex showed altered resting-state functional connectivity with the default mode network (DMN). Finally, we integrated these three complementary methods, interrogating the relationship between social GM clusters and specific WM and resting-state networks (RSNs). Probabilistic tractography seeded in these GM nodes utilized the SNS-related WM pathways. Further, the spatial and functional overlap between the social GM clusters and the DMN was significantly closer than other control RSNs. These integrative analyses provide convergent evidence of the role of specific circuits in SNS, likely supporting the adaptive behavior necessary for success in extensive social environments. Crown Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Social Network Sites, Individual Social Capital and Happiness

NARCIS (Netherlands)

E. Arampatzi (Efstratia); M.J. Burger (Martijn); N.A. Novik (Natallia)

2016-01-01

textabstractCan online social contacts replace the importance of real-life social connections in our pursuit of happiness? With the growing use of social network sites (SNSs), attention has been increasingly drawn to this topic. Our study empirically examines the effect of SNS use on happiness for

Social networking and privacy attitudes among

OpenAIRE

Kristen A. Carruth; Harvey J. Ginsburg

2014-01-01

Daily use of social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook has become routine for millions of Internet users. Facebook is currently still the most popular social media site. Social networking has been rapidly adopted by societies around the world. In particular, social media like Facebook provide sites where users can personalize a profile with their information, pictures, and videos that can be shared with other users. This information can be used in ways that may violate users’ privacy ...

A Social Network Analysis of Occupational Segregation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Buhai, Ioan Sebastian; van der Leij, Marco

We develop a social network model of occupational segregation between different social groups, generated by the existence of positive inbreeding bias among individuals from the same group. If network referrals are important for job search, then expected homophily in the contact network structure...

The Impact of Metagovernance on Local Governance Networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Damgaard, Bodil; Torfing, Jacob

2011-01-01

in which the municipality and a state agency shared responsibility for employment policy, while the other two were linked to jobcentres in which the municipality had full responsibility. We explore two types of metagovernance that the local governance networks were subject to: general, hands......This article analyses the impact of metagovernance on the functioning of local governance networks. It does so by comparing the functioning of four local governance networks in the field of local employment policy in Denmark. Between 2007 and 2009, two of these networks were linked to jobcentres......-off metagovernance consisting of the assignment of full responsibility to the municipality alone, or of shared responsibility to the municipality and the state jointly; and tailored and fine-tuned metagovernance directed towards only one or a few networks and their corresponding jobcentre(s). Our findings suggest...

Social networking sites use and the morphology of a social-semantic brain network.

Science.gov (United States)

Turel, Ofir; He, Qinghua; Brevers, Damien; Bechara, Antoine

2017-09-30

Social lives have shifted, at least in part, for large portions of the population to social networking sites. How such lifestyle changes may be associated with brain structures is still largely unknown. In this manuscript, we describe two preliminary studies aimed at exploring this issue. The first study (n = 276) showed that Facebook users reported on increased social-semantic and mentalizing demands, and that such increases were positively associated with people's level of Facebook use. The second study (n = 33) theorized on and examined likely anatomical correlates of such changes in demands on the brain. Findings indicated that the grey matter volumes of the posterior parts of the bilateral middle and superior temporal, and left fusiform gyri were positively associated with the level of Facebook use. These results provided preliminary evidence that grey matter volumes of brain structures involved in social-semantic and mentalizing tasks may be linked to the extent of social networking sites use.

Characterizing Social Interaction in Tobacco-Oriented Social Networks: An Empirical Analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Liang, Yunji; Zheng, Xiaolong; Zeng, Daniel Dajun; Zhou, Xingshe; Leischow, Scott James; Chung, Wingyan

2015-06-19

Social media is becoming a new battlefield for tobacco "wars". Evaluating the current situation is very crucial for the advocacy of tobacco control in the age of social media. To reveal the impact of tobacco-related user-generated content, this paper characterizes user interaction and social influence utilizing social network analysis and information theoretic approaches. Our empirical studies demonstrate that the exploding pro-tobacco content has long-lasting effects with more active users and broader influence, and reveal the shortage of social media resources in global tobacco control. It is found that the user interaction in the pro-tobacco group is more active, and user-generated content for tobacco promotion is more successful in obtaining user attention. Furthermore, we construct three tobacco-related social networks and investigate the topological patterns of these tobacco-related social networks. We find that the size of the pro-tobacco network overwhelms the others, which suggests a huge number of users are exposed to the pro-tobacco content. These results indicate that the gap between tobacco promotion and tobacco control is widening and tobacco control may be losing ground to tobacco promotion in social media.

The Private Lives of Minerals: Social Network Analysis Applied to Mineralogy and Petrology

Science.gov (United States)

Hazen, R. M.; Morrison, S. M.; Fox, P. A.; Golden, J. J.; Downs, R. T.; Eleish, A.; Prabhu, A.; Li, C.; Liu, C.

2016-12-01

Comprehensive databases of mineral species (rruff.info/ima) and their geographic localities and co-existing mineral assemblages (mindat.org) reveal patterns of mineral association and distribution that mimic social networks, as commonly applied to such varied topics as social media interactions, the spread of disease, terrorism networks, and research collaborations. Applying social network analysis (SNA) to common assemblages of rock-forming igneous and regional metamorphic mineral species, we find patterns of cohesion, segregation, density, and cliques that are similar to those of human social networks. These patterns highlight classic trends in lithologic evolution and are illustrated with sociograms, in which mineral species are the "nodes" and co-existing species form "links." Filters based on chemistry, age, structural group, and other parameters highlight visually both familiar and new aspects of mineralogy and petrology. We quantify sociograms with SNA metrics, including connectivity (based on the frequency of co-occurrence of mineral pairs), homophily (the extent to which co-existing mineral species share compositional and other characteristics), network closure (based on the degree of network interconnectivity), and segmentation (as revealed by isolated "cliques" of mineral species). Exploitation of large and growing mineral data resources with SNA offers promising avenues for discovering previously hidden trends in mineral diversity-distribution systematics, as well as providing new pedagogical approaches to teaching mineralogy and petrology.

Social Innovation and Sustainable Rural Development: The Case of a Brazilian Agroecology Network

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Oscar José Rover

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Food is central to human beings and their social life. The growing industrialization of the food system has led to a greater availability of food, along with an increasing risk perception and awareness in consumers. At the same time, there is an increasing resistance from citizens to the dominant model of production and a growing demand for healthy food. As a consequence, an increasing number of social networks have been formed worldwide involving the collaboration between producers and consumers. One of these networks, the Ecovida Agroecology Network, which operates in Southern Brazil, involves farming families, non-governmental organizations, and consumer organizations, together with other social actors. Using a qualitative approach based on participant observation and an analysis of documents, the article examines this network. The theoretical framework used is social innovation, which is commonly recognized as being fundamental in fostering rural development. Results show that Ecovida has instigated innovations that relate to its horizontal and decentralized structure, its participatory certification of organic food, and its dynamic relationship with the markets based on local exchanges and reciprocal relations. Furthermore, such innovation processes have been proven to impact on public sector policies and on the increasing cooperation between the social actors from rural and urban areas.

SOCIAL NETWORKS BETWEEN ICTS AND MORAL DECADENCE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Domingo Alarcón Ortiz

2013-07-01

Full Text Available The paradox of social networks in organizations is that they are a very important means of formation, training, update, information and communication, but also represent a symptom of cultural decay, because with them have been provided and processes of disinformation uncontrolled distribution of malicious information, which is assaulted by people. The abuse as to upload information indiscriminately leads to pathological, anti-social and cynical time’s behaviors. As many users of social networks does not assume a code of ethics according to social needs, then its limits of performance in terms of dignity and self-respect will not operate, constitute a serious social threat, against which the appropriate response has not been generated.  To participate in social networks, people end up exposing itself to that your privacy was hurt with impunity and thereby will limit or annul the opportunity to defend their dignity, turning them into a set of highly vulnerable entities. But as there is social by joining the network pressure, the question is it worth being in these networks? If you want to stay informed and share information, raises the dilemma of to where it can and should go.

Stories in Networks and Networks in Stories: A Tri-Modal Model for Mixed-Methods Social Network Research on Teachers

Science.gov (United States)

Baker-Doyle, Kira J.

2015-01-01

Social network research on teachers and schools has risen exponentially in recent years as an innovative method to reveal the role of social networks in education. However, scholars are still exploring ways to incorporate traditional quantitative methods of Social Network Analysis (SNA) with qualitative approaches to social network research. This…

Unscrewing social media networks, twice

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Birkbak, Andreas

2017-01-01

Social media are often claimed to be an important new force in politics. One way to investigate such a claim is to follow an early call made in actor-network theory (ANT) to “unscrew” those entities that are assumed to be important and show how they are made up of heterogeneous networks of many...... different actors (Callon and Latour 1981). In this article I take steps towards unscrewing seven Facebook pages that were used to mobilize citizens for and against road pricing in Copenhagen in 2011-2012. But I encounter the difficulty that social media are already explicitly understood in Internet Studies...... that it can be combined with liberal notions of a singular public sphere (Somers 1995b; 1995a). In order to unscrew social media as a political force, I suggest that we need to work through both the assembling of social media networks and attend to corresponding reconstructions of liberal political narratives...

Multiple Social Networks, Data Models and Measures for

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Magnani, Matteo; Rossi, Luca

2017-01-01

Multiple Social Network Analysis is a discipline defining models, measures, methodologies, and algorithms to study multiple social networks together as a single social system. It is particularly valuable when the networks are interconnected, e.g., the same actors are present in more than one...

Lessons from social network analyses for behavioral medicine.

Science.gov (United States)

Rosenquist, James N

2011-03-01

This study presents an overview of the rapidly expanding field of social network analysis, with an emphasis placed on work relevant to behavioral health clinicians and researchers. I outline how social network analysis is a distinct empirical methodology within the social sciences that has the potential to deepen our understanding of how mental health and addiction are influenced by social environmental factors. Whereas there have been a number of recent studies in the mental health literature that discuss social influences on mental illness and addiction, and a number of studies looking at how social networks influence health and behaviors, there are still relatively few studies that combine the two. Those that have suggest that mood symptoms as well as alcohol consumption are clustered within, and may travel along, social networks. Social networks appear to have an important influence on a variety of mental health conditions. This avenue of research has the potential to influence both clinical practice and public policy.

Polarity related influence maximization in signed social networks.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dong Li

Full Text Available Influence maximization in social networks has been widely studied motivated by applications like spread of ideas or innovations in a network and viral marketing of products. Current studies focus almost exclusively on unsigned social networks containing only positive relationships (e.g. friend or trust between users. Influence maximization in signed social networks containing both positive relationships and negative relationships (e.g. foe or distrust between users is still a challenging problem that has not been studied. Thus, in this paper, we propose the polarity-related influence maximization (PRIM problem which aims to find the seed node set with maximum positive influence or maximum negative influence in signed social networks. To address the PRIM problem, we first extend the standard Independent Cascade (IC model to the signed social networks and propose a Polarity-related Independent Cascade (named IC-P diffusion model. We prove that the influence function of the PRIM problem under the IC-P model is monotonic and submodular Thus, a greedy algorithm can be used to achieve an approximation ratio of 1-1/e for solving the PRIM problem in signed social networks. Experimental results on two signed social network datasets, Epinions and Slashdot, validate that our approximation algorithm for solving the PRIM problem outperforms state-of-the-art methods.

Effective Social Relationship Measurement and Cluster Based Routing in Mobile Opportunistic Networks †

Science.gov (United States)

Zeng, Feng; Zhao, Nan; Li, Wenjia

2017-01-01

In mobile opportunistic networks, the social relationship among nodes has an important impact on data transmission efficiency. Motivated by the strong share ability of “circles of friends” in communication networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Wechat and so on, we take a real-life example to show that social relationships among nodes consist of explicit and implicit parts. The explicit part comes from direct contact among nodes, and the implicit part can be measured through the “circles of friends”. We present the definitions of explicit and implicit social relationships between two nodes, adaptive weights of explicit and implicit parts are given according to the contact feature of nodes, and the distributed mechanism is designed to construct the “circles of friends” of nodes, which is used for the calculation of the implicit part of social relationship between nodes. Based on effective measurement of social relationships, we propose a social-based clustering and routing scheme, in which each node selects the nodes with close social relationships to form a local cluster, and the self-control method is used to keep all cluster members always having close relationships with each other. A cluster-based message forwarding mechanism is designed for opportunistic routing, in which each node only forwards the copy of the message to nodes with the destination node as a member of the local cluster. Simulation results show that the proposed social-based clustering and routing outperforms the other classic routing algorithms. PMID:28498309

Internet and social network recruitment: two case studies.

Science.gov (United States)

Johnson, Kathy A; Peace, Jane

2012-01-01

The recruitment of study participants is a significant research challenge. The Internet, with its ability to reach large numbers of people in networks connected by email, Facebook and other social networking mechanisms, appears to offer new avenues for recruitment. This paper reports recruitment experiences from two research projects that engaged the Internet and social networks in different ways for study recruitment. Drawing from the non-Internet recruitment literature, we speculate that the relationship with the source of the research and the purpose of the engaged social network should be a consideration in Internet or social network recruitment strategies.

Social-aware data dissemination in opportunistic mobile social networks

Science.gov (United States)

Yang, Yibo; Zhao, Honglin; Ma, Jinlong; Han, Xiaowei

Opportunistic Mobile Social Networks (OMSNs), formed by mobile users with social relationships and characteristics, enhance spontaneous communication among users that opportunistically encounter each other. Such networks can be exploited to improve the performance of data forwarding. Discovering optimal relay nodes is one of the important issues for efficient data propagation in OMSNs. Although traditional centrality definitions to identify the nodes features in network, they cannot identify effectively the influential nodes for data dissemination in OMSNs. Existing protocols take advantage of spatial contact frequency and social characteristics to enhance transmission performance. However, existing protocols have not fully exploited the benefits of the relations and the effects between geographical information, social features and user interests. In this paper, we first evaluate these three characteristics of users and design a routing protocol called Geo-Social-Interest (GSI) protocol to select optimal relay nodes. We compare the performance of GSI using real INFOCOM06 data sets. The experiment results demonstrate that GSI overperforms the other protocols with highest data delivery ratio and low communication overhead.

Social Networking Sites and Addiction: Ten Lessons Learned

Science.gov (United States)

Kuss, Daria J.; Griffiths, Mark D.

2017-01-01

Online social networking sites (SNSs) have gained increasing popularity in the last decade, with individuals engaging in SNSs to connect with others who share similar interests. The perceived need to be online may result in compulsive use of SNSs, which in extreme cases may result in symptoms and consequences traditionally associated with substance-related addictions. In order to present new insights into online social networking and addiction, in this paper, 10 lessons learned concerning online social networking sites and addiction based on the insights derived from recent empirical research will be presented. These are: (i) social networking and social media use are not the same; (ii) social networking is eclectic; (iii) social networking is a way of being; (iv) individuals can become addicted to using social networking sites; (v) Facebook addiction is only one example of SNS addiction; (vi) fear of missing out (FOMO) may be part of SNS addiction; (vii) smartphone addiction may be part of SNS addiction; (viii) nomophobia may be part of SNS addiction; (ix) there are sociodemographic differences in SNS addiction; and (x) there are methodological problems with research to date. These are discussed in turn. Recommendations for research and clinical applications are provided. PMID:28304359

Social Networking Sites and Addiction: Ten Lessons Learned

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Daria J. Kuss

2017-03-01

Full Text Available Online social networking sites (SNSs have gained increasing popularity in the last decade, with individuals engaging in SNSs to connect with others who share similar interests. The perceived need to be online may result in compulsive use of SNSs, which in extreme cases may result in symptoms and consequences traditionally associated with substance-related addictions. In order to present new insights into online social networking and addiction, in this paper, 10 lessons learned concerning online social networking sites and addiction based on the insights derived from recent empirical research will be presented. These are: (i social networking and social media use are not the same; (ii social networking is eclectic; (iii social networking is a way of being; (iv individuals can become addicted to using social networking sites; (v Facebook addiction is only one example of SNS addiction; (vi fear of missing out (FOMO may be part of SNS addiction; (vii smartphone addiction may be part of SNS addiction; (viii nomophobia may be part of SNS addiction; (ix there are sociodemographic differences in SNS addiction; and (x there are methodological problems with research to date. These are discussed in turn. Recommendations for research and clinical applications are provided.

When business networks “kill” social networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jackson, Laurel; Young, L.

2016-01-01

that considers the changes to a community's social network and the associated norms emerging from the growing influence of a microfinance providers' network. A case study reports the impact of microfinance on a particular Bangladesh rural community. We show there is a breakdown in traditional social networks...... in this and other poor rural villages brought about by the taking of micro loans when the families have no means of paying them back. This increased indebtedness to NGOs is perpetuating their poverty and diminishing the community's quality of life including their traditions of bounded solidarity, where families...... in the economic structure of rural Bangladesh and changing norms, in particular the changes to traditional forms of financial exchange and associated support and risk management. We conclude that public policy and a different business model that is more accountable and altruistic are needed to guide...

Social relations: network, support and relational strain

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Due, P; Holstein, B; Lund, Rikke

1999-01-01

We introduce a conceptual framework with social relations as the main concept and the structure and the function of social relations as subconcepts. The structure of social relations covers aspects of formal relations and social network. The function of social relations covers social support......,011. The postal questionnaires were answered by a random sample in each of the age groups. The results show marked age and gender differences in both the structure and the function of social relations. The social network, measured as weekly contacts, weakens with age and so does instrumental support. Emotional...... support is unrelated to this decline in contact frequency and appears to be at the same level for younger and older individuals. Relational strain, measured as conflicts, declines with age for all kinds of social relations. The weakening of the social network with age does not seem to affect the level...

Change Detection in Social Networks

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

McCulloh, Ian; Webb, Matthew; Graham, John; Carley, Kathleen; Horn, Daniel B

2008-01-01

.... This project proposes a new method for detecting change in social networks over time, by applying a cumulative sum statistical process control statistic to normally distributed network measures...

Social networks for innovation and new product development

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Leenders, R.T.A.J.; Dolfsma, W.

2016-01-01

In this article we first provide a brief introduction into social network analysis, focusing on the measures and approaches that are used in the empirical contributions in this special issue. Second, we discuss the role of social networks in new product development. Social networks are inherently

Smart social adaptation prevents catastrophic ecological regime shifts in networks of myopic harvesters

Science.gov (United States)

Donges, Jonathan; Lucht, Wolfgang; Wiedermann, Marc; Heitzig, Jobst; Kurths, Jürgen

2015-04-01

In the anthropocene, the rise of global social and economic networks with ever increasing connectivity and speed of interactions, e.g., the internet or global financial markets, is a key challenge for sustainable development. The spread of opinions, values or technologies on these networks, in conjunction with the coevolution of the network structures themselves, underlies nexuses of current concern such as anthropogenic climate change, biodiversity loss or global land use change. To isolate and quantitatively study the effects and implications of network dynamics for sustainable development, we propose an agent-based model of information flow on adaptive networks between myopic harvesters that exploit private renewable resources. In this conceptual model of a network of socio-ecological systems, information on management practices flows between agents via boundedly rational imitation depending on the state of the resource stocks involved in an interaction. Agents can also adapt the structure of their social network locally by preferentially connecting to culturally similar agents with identical management practices and, at the same time, disconnecting from culturally dissimilar agents. Investigating in detail the statistical mechanics of this model, we find that an increasing rate of information flow through faster imitation dynamics or growing density of network connectivity leads to a marked increase in the likelihood of environmental resource collapse. However, we show that an optimal rate of social network adaptation can mitigate this negative effect without loss of social cohesion through network fragmentation. Our results highlight that seemingly immaterial network dynamics of spreading opinions or values can be of large relevance for the sustainable management of socio-ecological systems and suggest smartly conservative network adaptation as a strategy for mitigating environmental collapse. Hence, facing the great acceleration, these network dynamics should

Similar Others in Same-Sex Couples' Social Networks.

Science.gov (United States)

LeBlanc, Allen J; Frost, David M; Alston-Stepnitz, Eli; Bauermeister, Jose; Stephenson, Rob; Woodyatt, Cory R; de Vries, Brian

2015-01-01

Same-sex couples experience unique minority stressors. It is known that strong social networks facilitate access to psychosocial resources that help people reduce and manage stress. However, little is known about the social networks of same-sex couples, in particular their connections to other same-sex couples, which is important to understand given that the presence of similar others in social networks can ameliorate social stress for stigmatized populations. In this brief report, we present data from a diverse sample of 120 same-sex couples in Atlanta and San Francisco. The median number of other same-sex couples known was 12; couples where one partner was non-Hispanic White and the other a person of color knew relatively few other same-sex couples; and there was a high degree of homophily within the social networks of same-sex couples. These data establish a useful starting point for future investigations of couples' social networks, especially couples whose relationships are stigmatized or marginalized in some way. Better understandings of the size, composition, and functions of same-sex couples' social networks are critically needed.

Social Networking of Instrumentation - a Case Study in Telematics

OpenAIRE

ROBU, D.; SANDU, F.; PETREUS, D.; NEDELCU, A.; BALICA, A.

2014-01-01

The research work contributes to the design and implementation of the communication part for integrating remote instruments and drives via social networks (SN) into instrumentation communities. It is used the virtual instrumentation (VI) to manage objects that tweet on popular SN platforms applying the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT). Local and remote resource aggregation is based on National Instruments (NI) data acquisition and distribution hardware in a NI software ...

The Social Dynamics of Innovation Networks

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Rutten, Roel; Benneworth, Paul Stephen; Irawati, Dessy; Boekema, Frans

2014-01-01

The social dynamics of innovation networks captures the important role of trust, social capital, institutions and norms and values in the creation of knowledge in innovation networks. In doing so, this book connects to a long-standing debate on the socio-spatial context of innovation in economic

Social networks, social support mechanisms, and quality of life after breast cancer diagnosis.

Science.gov (United States)

Kroenke, Candyce H; Kwan, Marilyn L; Neugut, Alfred I; Ergas, Isaac J; Wright, Jaime D; Caan, Bette J; Hershman, Dawn; Kushi, Lawrence H

2013-06-01

We examined mechanisms through which social relationships influence quality of life (QOL) in breast cancer survivors. This study included 3,139 women from the Pathways Study who were diagnosed with breast cancer from 2006 to 2011 and provided data on social networks (the presence of a spouse or intimate partner, religious/social ties, volunteering, and numbers of close friends and relatives), social support (tangible support, emotional/informational support, affection, positive social interaction), and QOL, measured by the FACT-B, approximately 2 months post diagnosis. We used logistic models to evaluate associations between social network size, social support, and lower versus higher than median QOL scores. We further stratified by stage at diagnosis and treatment. In multivariate-adjusted analyses, women who were characterized as socially isolated had significantly lower FACT-B (OR = 2.18, 95 % CI: 1.72-2.77), physical well-being (WB) (OR = 1.61, 95 % CI: 1.27-2.03), functional WB (OR = 2.08, 95 % CI: 1.65-2.63), social WB (OR = 3.46, 95 % CI: 2.73-4.39), and emotional WB (OR = 1.67, 95 % CI: 1.33-2.11) scores and higher breast cancer symptoms (OR = 1.48, 95 % CI: 1.18-1.87) compared with socially integrated women. Each social network member independently predicted higher QOL. Simultaneous adjustment for social networks and social support partially attenuated associations between social networks and QOL. The strongest mediator and type of social support that was most predictive of QOL outcomes was "positive social interaction." However, each type of support was important depending on outcome, stage, and treatment status. Larger social networks and greater social support were related to higher QOL after a diagnosis of breast cancer. Effective social support interventions need to evolve beyond social-emotional interventions and need to account for disease severity and treatment status.

Social networks, social support mechanisms, and quality of life after breast cancer diagnosis

Science.gov (United States)

Kroenke, Candyce H; Kwan, Marilyn L.; Neugut, Alfred I.; Ergas, Isaac J.; Wright, Jaime D.; Caan, Bette J.; Hershman, Dawn; Kushi, Lawrence H.

2013-01-01

Purpose We examined mechanisms through which social relationships influence quality of life (QOL) in breast cancer survivors. Methods This study included 3,139 women from the Pathways Study who were diagnosed with breast cancer from 2006-2011 and provided data on social networks (presence of spouse or intimate partner, religious/social ties, volunteering, and numbers of close friends and relatives), social support (tangible, emotional/informational, affection, positive social interaction), and quality of life (QOL), measured by the FACT-B, approximately two months post-diagnosis. We used logistic models to evaluate associations between social network size, social support, and lower vs. higher than median QOL scores. We further stratified by stage at diagnosis and treatment. Results In multivariate-adjusted analyses, women who were characterized as socially isolated had significantly lower FACT-B (OR=2.18, 95%CI:1.72-2.77), physical well-being (WB) (OR=1.61, 95%CI:1.27-2.03), functional WB (OR=2.08, 95%CI:1.65-2.63), social WB (OR=3.46, 95%CI:2.73-4.39), and emotional WB (OR=1.67, 95%CI:1.33-2.11) scores and higher breast cancer symptoms (OR=1.48, 95%CI:1.18-1.87), compared with socially integrated women. Each social network member independently predicted higher QOL. Simultaneous adjustment for social networks and social support partially attenuated associations between social networks and QOL. The strongest mediator and type of social support that was most predictive of QOL outcomes was “positive social interaction”. However, each type of support was important depending on outcome, stage, and treatment status. Conclusions Larger social networks and greater social support were related to higher QOL after a diagnosis of breast cancer. Effective social support interventions need to evolve beyond social-emotional interventions and need to account for disease severity and treatment status. PMID:23657404

Social networks a framework of computational intelligence

CERN Document Server

Chen, Shyi-Ming

2014-01-01

This volume provides the audience with an updated, in-depth and highly coherent material on the conceptually appealing and practically sound information technology of Computational Intelligence applied to the analysis, synthesis and evaluation of social networks. The volume involves studies devoted to key issues of social networks including community structure detection in networks, online social networks, knowledge growth and evaluation, and diversity of collaboration mechanisms.  The book engages a wealth of methods of Computational Intelligence along with well-known techniques of linear programming, Formal Concept Analysis, machine learning, and agent modeling.  Human-centricity is of paramount relevance and this facet manifests in many ways including personalized semantics, trust metric, and personal knowledge management; just to highlight a few of these aspects. The contributors to this volume report on various essential applications including cyber attacks detection, building enterprise social network...

Social networking sites and older users - a systematic review

OpenAIRE

Nef, Tobias; Ganea, Raluca L.; Müri, René M.; Mosimann, Urs P.

2017-01-01

BACKGROUND Social networking sites can be beneficial for senior citizens to promote social participation and to enhance intergenerational communication. Particularly for older adults with impaired mobility, social networking sites can help them to connect with family members and other active social networking users. The aim of this systematic review is to give an overview of existing scientific literature on social networking in older users. METHODS Computerized databases were sea...

Social Networking and the Social and Emotional Wellbeing of Adolescents in Australia

Science.gov (United States)

Bourgeois, Amanda; Bower, Julie; Carroll, Annemaree

2014-01-01

Technology and social networking tools and sites are changing the way young people build and maintain their social connections with others (Boyd & Ellison, 2008). This study utilised a new measure, The Self in a Social Context, Virtual Connectedness subscale (SSC-VC subscale), to examine the effects of social networking tools and sites on…

Social Networking Sites: A premise on enhancement

OpenAIRE

MANINDERPAL SINGH SAINI; GYEWON MOON

2013-01-01

This article address five constructs that are paramount toward continued evolution of social networking sites (SNS`s) they include, - stabilisation, visual, language, security and flexibility. These constructs add to our proposed framework. Firmly grounded research on social networking sites and literature, we propose that user feedback, is the critical component that stimulates the development and growth of social networking sites online. We offer a framework that can aid new and current soc...

Social network analysis: Presenting an underused method for nursing research.

Science.gov (United States)

Parnell, James Michael; Robinson, Jennifer C

2018-06-01

This paper introduces social network analysis as a versatile method with many applications in nursing research. Social networks have been studied for years in many social science fields. The methods continue to advance but remain unknown to most nursing scholars. Discussion paper. English language and interpreted literature was searched from Ovid Healthstar, CINAHL, PubMed Central, Scopus and hard copy texts from 1965 - 2017. Social network analysis first emerged in nursing literature in 1995 and appears minimally through present day. To convey the versatility and applicability of social network analysis in nursing, hypothetical scenarios are presented. The scenarios are illustrative of three approaches to social network analysis and include key elements of social network research design. The methods of social network analysis are underused in nursing research, primarily because they are unknown to most scholars. However, there is methodological flexibility and epistemological versatility capable of supporting quantitative and qualitative research. The analytic techniques of social network analysis can add new insight into many areas of nursing inquiry, especially those influenced by cultural norms. Furthermore, visualization techniques associated with social network analysis can be used to generate new hypotheses. Social network analysis can potentially uncover findings not accessible through methods commonly used in nursing research. Social networks can be analysed based on individual-level attributes, whole networks and subgroups within networks. Computations derived from social network analysis may stand alone to answer a research question or incorporated as variables into robust statistical models. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

The Role of Social Networking Services in eParticipation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sæbø, Øystein; Rose, Jeremy; Nyvang, Tom

2009-01-01

, content-generation and the development of loosely-coupled communities. They provide the forum for much discussion and interaction. In this respect social networking could contribute to solve some of the problems of engaging their users that eParticipation services often struggle with. This paper...... and social networking because democratic systems favour the interests of larger groups of citizens --- the more voices behind a political proposition, the greater its chances of success. In this context of challenges the study of social networking on the internet and social network theory offers valuable...... insights into the practices and theories of citizen engagement. Social network theory focuses on the chains of relationships that social actors communicate and act within. Some social networking services on the internet attract large numbers of users, and apparently sustain a great deal of interaction...

Risk aversion and social networks

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kovarik, J.; van der Leij, M.J.

2011-01-01

Agents involved in the formation of a social or economic network typically face uncertainty about the benefits of creating a link. However, the interplay of such uncertainty and risk attitudes has been neglected in the network formation literature. We propose a dynamic network formation model that

Risk aversion and social networks

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kovářík, J.; van der Leij, M.J.

2012-01-01

Agents involved in the formation of a social or economic network typically face uncertainty about the benefits of creating a link. However, the interplay of such uncertainty and risk attitudes has been neglected in the network formation literature. We propose a dynamic network formation model that

The moderating role of attachment anxiety on social network site use intensity and social capital.

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Haihua; Shi, Junqi; Liu, Yihao; Sheng, Zitong

2013-02-01

This study examined the moderating role of attachment anxiety on the relationship between intensity of social network site use and bridging, bonding, and maintained social capital. Data from 322 undergraduate Chinese students were collected. Hierarchical regression analyses showed positive relationships between online intensity of social network site use and the three types of social capital. Moreover, attachment anxiety moderated the effect of intensity of social network site use on social capital. Specifically, for students with lower attachment anxiety, the relationships between intensity of social network site use and bonding and bridging social capital were stronger than those with higher attachment anxiety. The result suggested that social network sites cannot improve highly anxiously attached individuals' social capital effectively; they may need more face-to-face communications.

Reciprocity and the Emergence of Power Laws in Social Networks

Science.gov (United States)

Schnegg, Michael

Research in network science has shown that many naturally occurring and technologically constructed networks are scale free, that means a power law degree distribution emerges from a growth model in which each new node attaches to the existing network with a probability proportional to its number of links (= degree). Little is known about whether the same principles of local attachment and global properties apply to societies as well. Empirical evidence from six ethnographic case studies shows that complex social networks have significantly lower scaling exponents γ ~ 1 than have been assumed in the past. Apparently humans do not only look for the most prominent players to play with. Moreover cooperation in humans is characterized through reciprocity, the tendency to give to those from whom one has received in the past. Both variables — reciprocity and the scaling exponent — are negatively correlated (r = -0.767, sig = 0.075). If we include this effect in simulations of growing networks, degree distributions emerge that are much closer to those empirically observed. While the proportion of nodes with small degrees decreases drastically as we introduce reciprocity, the scaling exponent is more robust and changes only when a relatively large proportion of attachment decisions follow this rule. If social networks are less scale free than previously assumed this has far reaching implications for policy makers, public health programs and marketing alike.

Social networks: Good and evil of modern society

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mučibabić Vladimir

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Communication via social networks (Facebook, Twitter undoubtedly changed the way of communication between people. With just a few clicks on the Internet, you have the opportunity to learn almost everything about one person, from his profession, interests, to see his photos from the personal albums. This type of social networking has become more popular in 2003. when web pages as MySpace and Friendster were created. Today we have Facebook and Twitter, as a social network leaders. Social networks definitely have a lot of positive effects, easy and free contact with family or friends living in other countries, meeting new people, and lately have become very useful in a business way, especially in the free marketing that provides. In addition, social networks are improving technology skills of users, and are increasingly used for educational purposes. As for the negative sides, their number is also not negligible - the reduction of social interaction in real life and creating a false sense of socialization, social isolation, loss of time, identity theft, cyber crime, health problems, both mentally and physically. The development of mobile phone technology (smartphone, through which it is easy to go online and use social networks, make health risk becomes even greater.

Effect of online social networking on employee productivity

OpenAIRE

A. Ferreira; T. du Plessis

2009-01-01

The popularity of social networking sites is relatively recent and the effect of online social networking (OSN) on employee productivity has not received much scholarly attention. The reason most likely lies in the social nature of social networking sites and OSN, which is assumed to have a negative effect on employee productivity and not bear organisational benefit. This reseach investigated recent Internet developments as seen in the social Web and specifically investigated the effect of OS...

Recommender systems for location-based social networks

CERN Document Server

Symeonidis, Panagiotis; Manolopoulos, Yannis

2014-01-01

Online social networks collect information from users' social contacts and their daily interactions (co-tagging of photos, co-rating of products etc.) to provide them with recommendations of new products or friends. Lately, technological progressions in mobile devices (i.e. smart phones) enabled the incorporation of geo-location data in the traditional web-based online social networks, bringing the new era of Social and Mobile Web. The goal of this book is to bring together important research in a new family of recommender systems aimed at serving Location-based Social Networks (LBSNs). The chapters introduce a wide variety of recent approaches, from the most basic to the state-of-the-art, for providing recommendations in LBSNs. The book is organized into three parts. Part 1 provides introductory material on recommender systems, online social networks and LBSNs. Part 2 presents a wide variety of recommendation algorithms, ranging from basic to cutting edge, as well as a comparison of the characteristics of t...

Social networks: communication and change

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gustavo Cardoso

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Virtual social networks have brought about the possibility for open and plural debate, where all those with the necessary literacy skills and means are able to participate in the creation and dissemination of information. By pressing political agents and determining the “agenda” of a lot of the media, users demonstrate that we stand at an ideal platform for creating both real social movements and more or less fleeting events, as manifestos or virtual campaigns. Nonetheless, in order to understand the role of virtual social networks in today’s world, we need to answer some prior questions. Are we facing a new communication model, whereby the product of “disinterested” interactivity creates an aura of confidence in disseminated information, often quite higher that that seen in the “old media”? Will that interactivity be a chance to fight-off citizens’ growing detachment with regard to the “res publica”? Will we find in citizen-made journalism, transmitted through virtual social networks, the consecration of a true fourth power? On the other hand, can we call the distinct collective movements we have seen emerging true “social movements”?The present article aims to examine this and other issues that come to the fore in the intricate social world of cyberspace.

Integrating social networks and human social motives to achieve social influence at scale

Science.gov (United States)

Contractor, Noshir S.; DeChurch, Leslie A.

2014-01-01

The innovations of science often point to ideas and behaviors that must spread and take root in communities to have impact. Ideas, practices, and behaviors need to go from accepted truths on the part of a few scientists to commonplace beliefs and norms in the minds of the many. Moving from scientific discoveries to public good requires social influence. We introduce a structured influence process (SIP) framework to explain how social networks (i.e., the structure of social influence) and human social motives (i.e., the process of social influence wherein one person’s attitudes and behaviors affect another’s) are used collectively to enact social influence within a community. The SIP framework advances the science of scientific communication by positing social influence events that consider both the “who” and the “how” of social influence. This framework synthesizes core ideas from two bodies of research on social influence. The first is network research on social influence structures, which identifies who are the opinion leaders and who among their network of peers shapes their attitudes and behaviors. The second is research on social influence processes in psychology, which explores how human social motives such as the need for accuracy or the need for affiliation stimulate behavior change. We illustrate the practical implications of the SIP framework by applying it to the case of reducing neonatal mortality in India. PMID:25225373

Integrating social networks and human social motives to achieve social influence at scale.

Science.gov (United States)

Contractor, Noshir S; DeChurch, Leslie A

2014-09-16

The innovations of science often point to ideas and behaviors that must spread and take root in communities to have impact. Ideas, practices, and behaviors need to go from accepted truths on the part of a few scientists to commonplace beliefs and norms in the minds of the many. Moving from scientific discoveries to public good requires social influence. We introduce a structured influence process (SIP) framework to explain how social networks (i.e., the structure of social influence) and human social motives (i.e., the process of social influence wherein one person's attitudes and behaviors affect another's) are used collectively to enact social influence within a community. The SIP framework advances the science of scientific communication by positing social influence events that consider both the "who" and the "how" of social influence. This framework synthesizes core ideas from two bodies of research on social influence. The first is network research on social influence structures, which identifies who are the opinion leaders and who among their network of peers shapes their attitudes and behaviors. The second is research on social influence processes in psychology, which explores how human social motives such as the need for accuracy or the need for affiliation stimulate behavior change. We illustrate the practical implications of the SIP framework by applying it to the case of reducing neonatal mortality in India.

Inferring Trust Relationships in Web-Based Social Networks

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Golbeck, Jennifer; Hendler, James

2006-01-01

The growth of web-based social networking and the properties of those networks have created great potential for producing intelligent software that integrates a user's social network and preferences...

Connected or informed?: Local Twitter networking in a London neighbourhood

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

John Bingham-Hall

2015-08-01

Full Text Available This paper asks whether geographically localised, or ‘hyperlocal’, uses of Twitter succeed in creating peer-to-peer neighbourhood networks or simply act as broadcast media at a reduced scale. Literature drawn from the smart cities discourse and from a UK research project into hyperlocal media, respectively, take on these two opposing interpretations. Evidence gathered in the case study presented here is consistent with the latter, and on this basis we criticise the notion that hyperlocal social media can be seen as a community in itself. We demonstrate this by creating a network map of Twitter followers of a popular hyperlocal blog in Brockley, southeast London. We describe various attributes of this network including its average degree and clustering coefficient to suggest that a small and highly connected cluster of visible local entities such as businesses form a clique at the centre of this network, with individual residents following these but not one another. We then plot the locations of these entities and demonstrate that sub-communities in the network are formed due to close geographical proximity between smaller sets of businesses. These observations are illustrated with qualitative evidence from interviews with users who suggest instead that rather than being connected to one another they benefit from what has been described as ‘neighbourhood storytelling’. Despite the limitations of working with Twitter data, we propose that this multi-modal approach offers a valuable way to investigate the experience of using social media as a communication tool in urban neighbourhoods.

THE IMPACTS OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES IN HIGHER LEARNING

OpenAIRE

Mohd Ishak Bin Ismail; Ruzaini Bin Abdullah Arshah

2016-01-01

Social networking sites, a web-based application have permeated the boundary between personal lives and student lives. Nowadays, students in higher learning used social networking site such as Facebook to facilitate their learning through the academic collaboration which it further enhances students’ social capital. Social networking site has many advantages to improve students’ learning. To date, Facebook is the leading social networking sites at this time which it being widely used by stude...

Understanding the process of social network evolution: Online-offline integrated analysis of social tie formation.

Science.gov (United States)

Kwak, Doyeon; Kim, Wonjoon

2017-01-01

It is important to consider the interweaving nature of online and offline social networks when we examine social network evolution. However, it is difficult to find any research that examines the process of social tie formation from an integrated perspective. In our study, we quantitatively measure offline interactions and examine the corresponding evolution of online social network in order to understand the significance of interrelationship between online and offline social factors in generating social ties. We analyze the radio signal strength indicator sensor data from a series of social events to understand offline interactions among the participants and measure the structural attributes of their existing online Facebook social networks. By monitoring the changes in their online social networks before and after offline interactions in a series of social events, we verify that the ability to develop an offline interaction into an online friendship is tied to the number of social connections that participants previously had, while the presence of shared mutual friends between a pair of participants disrupts potential new connections within the pre-designed offline social events. Thus, while our integrative approach enables us to confirm the theory of preferential attachment in the process of network formation, the common neighbor theory is not supported. Our dual-dimensional network analysis allows us to observe the actual process of social network evolution rather than to make predictions based on the assumption of self-organizing networks.