Link formation in mobile and economic networks : model and empirical analysis

In this dissertation, we study three link formation problems in mobile and economic networks: (i) company matching for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) network in the high-technology (high-tech) industry, (ii) mobile application (app) matching for cross promotion network in mobile app markets, and (iii) online friendship formation in mobile social networks. Each problem can be modeled as link formation problem in a graph, where nodes represent independent entities (e.g., companies, apps, users) and edges represent interactions (e.g., transactions, promotions, friendships) among the nodes. First, we propose a new data-analytic approach to measure firms' dyadic business proximity to analyze M&A network in the high-tech industry. Specifically, our method analyzes the unstructured texts that describe firms' businesses using latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling, and constructs a novel business proximity measure based on the output. Using CrunchBase data including 24,382 high-tech companies and 1,689 M&A transactions, we empirically validate our business proximity measure in the context of industry intelligence and show the measure's effectiveness in an application of M&A network analysis. Based on the research, we build a cloud-based information system to facilitate competitive intelligence on the high-tech industry. Second, we analyze mobile app matching for cross promotion network in mobile app markets. Cross promotion (CP) is a new app promotion framework, in which a mobile app is promoted to the users of another app. Using IGAWorks data covering 1,011 CP campaigns, 325 apps, and 301,183 users, we evaluate the effectiveness of CP campaigns in comparison with existing ad channels such as mobile display ads. While CP campaigns, on average, are still suboptimal as compared with display ads, we find evidence that a careful matching of mobile apps can significantly improve the effectiveness of CP campaigns. Our empirical results show that app similarity, measured by LDA from apps' text descriptions, is a significant factor that increases the user engagement in CP campaigns. With this observation, we propose an app matching mechanism for the CP network to improve the ad effectiveness. Third, we study friendship network formation in a location-based social network. We build a structural model of social link creation that incorporates individual characteristics and pairwise user similarities. Specifically, we define four user proximity measures from biography, geography, mobility, and short messages (i.e., tweets). To construct proximity from unstructured text information, we build LDA topic models of user biography texts and tweets. Using Gowalla data with 385,306 users, three million locations, and 35 million check-in records, we empirically estimate the structural model to find evidence on the homophily effect in network formation.Computer Science

Providing enhanced social interaction services for industry exhibitors at large medical conferences

Large medical conferences offer opportunities for participants to find industry exhibitors that offer products and services relevant to their professional interests. Companies often invest significant effort in promotions that encourage participants to spend time at their stand (e.g. providing free gifts, leaflets, running competitions) and register some contact details. Attendees will use the conference to find others who also share similar professional interests, as well as keep up to date with developments on products such has pharmaceuticals and medical equipment. From both perspectives, a number of improvements can be made to enhance the overall experience by using existing active RFID technology: Vendors would be able to more closely monitor the success of their promotions with statistics on the stand's visitors, as well as find more potential customers by using real-time visualizations; Participants would be able to log their social interactions, keeping an electronic history of the people they have met. The SocioPatterns project and Live Social Semantics experiments have recently demonstrated a scalable and robust infrastructure that would support these kinds of improvements. In this paper, we propose an infrastructure that provides enhanced social interaction services for vendors and participants by using small active RFID badges worn by attendees and attached to fixed location

Tackling food marketing to children in a digital world: trans-disciplinary perspectives. Children’s rights, evidence of impact, methodological challenges, regulatory options and policy implications for the WHO European Region

There is unequivocal evidence that childhood obesity is influenced by marketing of foods and non-alcoholic beverages high in saturated fat, salt and/or free sugars (HFSS), and a core recommendation of the WHO Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity is to reduce children’s exposure to all such marketing. As a result, WHO has called on Member States to introduce restrictions on marketing of HFSS foods to children, covering all media, including digital, and to close any regulatory loopholes. This publication provides up-to-date information on the marketing of foods and non-alcoholic beverages to children and the changes that have occurred in recent years, focusing in particular on the major shift to digital marketing. It examines trends in media use among children, marketing methods in the new digital media landscape and children’s engagement with such marketing. It also considers the impact on children and their ability to counter marketing as well as the implications for children’s rights and digital privacy. Finally the report discusses the policy implications and some of the recent policy action by WHO European Member States

Film and Tourism. An Information System for Disclosing the Cinematographic Attractiveness of Destinations (Giulia Lavarone pp.289-291)

The Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Padova investigated the topic of film-induced tourism in a year-long project, concluded in April 2015, titled Strumenti innovativi per la promozione turistica: film-induced tourism (Novel Tools to Promote Tourism: Film-induced Tourism). The project was financed by the Veneto Region through ESF funds. It brought together the expertise of film scholars, computer scientists and destination management experts, in partnership with public bodies (Provincia di Padova) and ICT companies. The goal of the project was to develop an information system that fosters film-induced tourism combining data about a geographical area and the movies produced in it. The system is designed as a platform to store and convey rich contents, able to address the needs of the tourist but also of stakeholders as DMOs and film commissions. The system was planned as a model for the destinations which could take advantage of a significant cinematographic background, yet are unlikely to spontaneously produce considerable film-induced tourism phenomena. The province of Padova has been used as a case study

DIY networking as a facilitator for interdisciplinary research on the hybrid city

DIY networking is a technology with special characteristics compared to the public Internet, which holds a unique potential for empowering citizens to shape their hybrid urban space toward conviviality and collective awareness. It can also play the role of a “boundary object” for facilitating interdisciplinary interactions and participatory processes between different actors: researchers, engineers, practitioners, artists, designers, local authorities, and activists. This position paper presents a social learning framework, the DIY networking paradigm, that we aim to put in the centre of the hybrid space design process. We first introduce our individual views on the role of design as discussed in the fields of engineering, urban planning, urban interaction design, design research, and community informatics. We then introduce a simple methodology for combining these diverse perspectives into a meaningful interdisciplinary collaboration, through a series of related events with different structure and framing. We conclude with a short summary of a selection of these events, which serves also as an introduction to the CONTACT workshop on facilitating information sharing between strangers, in the context of the Hybrid City III conference

From Quantity to Quality: Challenges for Investment Promotion Agencies

Most investment promotion agencies worldwide are now placing a higher emphasis on attracting high "quality" FDI, including R&D centers and headquarter functions as well as knowledgeintensive industries such as information and communication technologies, biotechnology or nanotechnology. We argue that this requires a different approach than policies focused on the "quantity" of FDI inflows, leading to changes in the policy mix and in the approach to performance measurement. Targeting quality entails a shift from a mindset that prioritizes attraction of greenfield investments towards one where the focus is on subsidiary development. Another implication is that the interplay between FDI policies and innovation policies becomes more relevant and needs to be further nurtured. We focus on the management challenges that investment promotion agencies face in this transition from quantity to quality, drawing attention to the consequences for their human capital, structural capital and relational capital strategies.Aftercare, FDI, intellectual capital, investment promotion, R&D, subsidiary development