Search results for " Social networks"
showing 10 items of 58 documents
Whom to befriend to influence people
2020
Alice wants to join a new social network, and influence its members to adopt a new product or idea. Each person $v$ in the network has a certain threshold $t(v)$ for {\em activation}, i.e adoption of the product or idea. If $v$ has at least $t(v)$ activated neighbors, then $v$ will also become activated. If Alice wants to activate the entire social network, whom should she befriend? More generally, we study the problem of finding the minimum number of links that a set of external influencers should form to people in the network, in order to activate the entire social network. This {\em Minimum Links} Problem has applications in viral marketing and the study of epidemics. Its solution can be…
Fake news and infodemia at the time of covid-19
2020
The essay has as its object fake news and excess of pieces of information with particular attention to the pandemic emergency we are currently living: COVID-19. After a careful consideration about what fake news actually are, the paper analyzes the pitfalls concerning the communication through virtual technologies, where social networks let the news reach the user only if they pass some requirements, in order to give the user a personalized experience of being informed. As a result, the profiling process traps the user in a cage, which is a paradox, because the internet it’s literally supposed to be without borders and barriers. The current crisis caused by the global pandemic has brought t…
Forma mentis networks map how nursing and engineering students enhance their mindsets about innovation and health during professional growth
2020
Reconstructing a “forma mentis”, a mindset, and its changes, means capturing how individuals perceive topics, trends and experiences over time. To this aim we use forma mentis networks (FMNs), which enable direct, microscopic access to how individuals conceptually perceive knowledge and sentiment around a topic, providing richer contextual information than machine learning. FMNs build cognitive representations of stances through psycholinguistic tools like conceptual associations from semantic memory (free associations, i.e., one concept eliciting another) and affect norms (valence, i.e., how attractive a concept is). We test FMNs by investigating how Norwegian nursing and engineering stude…
Prevention of hate speech crimes: digital versus real-life environment
2022
Extending the use of social media and other digital networks, as well as technology development and the impact of the pandemic have raised the problem of how to prevent hateful speech from occurring. Limitations on hate speech closely correlate with restriction of freedom of speech, therefore balance between the two should be met to ensure both fundamental democratic right on the freedom of speech, as well as to restrict limitations on one’s honour, dignity and safety. To answer whether mechanisms for combating the crimes of hate speech in the digital environment are as effective as they are in a real-life situation, the author analyses the international (United Nations) and Council of Euro…
Social Influence Maximization in Hypergraphs
2021
This work deals with a generalization of the minimum Target Set Selection (TSS) problem, a key algorithmic question in information diffusion research due to its potential commercial value. Firstly proposed by Kempe et al., the TSS problem is based on a linear threshold diffusion model defined on an input graph with node thresholds, quantifying the hardness to influence each node. The goal is to find the smaller set of items that can influence the whole network according to the diffusion model defined. This study generalizes the TSS problem on networks characterized by many-to-many relationships modeled via hypergraphs. Specifically, we introduce a linear threshold diffusion process on such …
Distributed Coverage of Ego Networks in F2F Online Social Networks
2016
Although most online social networks rely on a centralized infrastructure, several proposals of Distributed Online Social Networks (DOSNs) have been recently presented. Since in DOSNs user profiles are stored on the peers of the users belonging to the network, one of the main challenges comes from guaranteeing the profile availability when the owner of the data is not online. In this paper, we propose a DOSN based on a friend-to-friend P2P overlay where the user's data is stored only on friend peers. Our approach is based on the ego-network concept, which models the social network from the local point of view of a single user. We propose a distributed algorithm which is based on the notion …
Privacy and temporal aware allocation of data in decentralized online social networks
2017
Distributed Online Social Networks (DOSNs) have recently been proposed to grant users more control over the data they share with the other users. Indeed, in contrast to centralized Online Social Networks (such as Facebook), DOSNs are not based on centralized storage services, because the contents shared by the users are stored on the devices of the users themselves. One of the main challenges in a DOSN comes from guaranteeing availability of the users' contents when the data owner disconnects from the network. In this paper, we focus our attention on data availability by proposing a distributed allocation strategy which takes into account both the privacy policies defined on the contents an…
Recruitment through migrant social networks from Latvia to the United Kingdom: Motivations, processes and developments
2015
A burgeoning body of literature exists in relation to the role of social networks in connecting migrant workers with employment opportunities, particularly in lower wage jobs. This evidence points to social networks being an attractive recruitment channel from the perspective of both migrants seeking employment and employers seeking employees. This analysis presents a wide breadth of original material, which examines recruitment through social networks from the perspective of both migrants and employers. This includes data drawn from an extensive mixed methods approach involving a novel online survey of Latvian migrants in the UK and face-to-face interviews with British low-wage employers. …
A Comparative Facebook Content Analysis between Romanian and Western European Airline Carriers
2014
This research aims to investigate the different social media strategies adopted by the airline companies from two European regions. In the attempt to land more customers on their social media runway, drive more sales from social media content, increase customer satisfaction through a high response rate or increase their brand awareness, the airlines combine creativity and high-quality ideas to better promote their products and services to customers all around the globe. The paper analyses the content (number of fans, posts, number of likes, the dynamics of comments, response rate) on the Facebook pages of Tarom, Blue Air, Wizz Air, Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, KLM International and Air Eur…
Anàlisi feminista de les xarxes socials de les migrants colombianes al País Valencià
2010
The results of this piece of research2 on migrant women3 are presented from a feminist approach. The research shows the current diversity in migration processes and, specifically, the key role of finding out the social practices of political migrants. The differences and similarities found in the two groups' social networks and practices are identified and compared from a social point of view, through a completely new interpretation of the concepts of economic and political migrants. This research thus aims to understand the characteristics of participative practices within the group of Colombian migrants living and taking part in two societies at the same time.