An Information Diffusion-Based Recommendation Framework for Micro-Blogging

Micro-blogging is increasingly evolving from a daily chatting tool into a critical platform for individuals and organizations to seek and share real-time news updates during emergencies. However, seeking and extracting useful information from micro-blogging sites poses significant challenges due to the volume of the traffic and the presence of a large body of irrelevant personal messages and spam. In this paper, we propose a novel recommendation framework to overcome this problem. By analyzing information diffusion patterns among a large set of micro-blogs that play the role of emergency news providers, our approach selects a small subset as recommended emergency news feeds for regular users. We evaluate our diffusion-based recommendation framework on Twitter during the early outbreak of H1N1 Flu. The evaluation results show that our method results in more balanced and comprehensive recommendations compared to benchmark approaches

Understanding Factors Influencing Users’ Retweeting Behavior---A Theoretical Perspective

Currently, a large percentage of tweets in micro-blogging platform are retweets. In this study, we propose to examine the factors that motivate users’ retweeting behavior, leading users to prefer to transform others’ tweets than posting their own. We suggest that Information Sharing Self-Efficacy, Attachment Motivation and Critical Mass are the three antecedents contributing to the users’ retweeting behavior. Both theoretical and practical implications of this study are also discussed

Urban Planning and Corona Spaces – Scales, Walls and COVID-19 Coincidences

This study focuses on the role and responsibility of urban planning in mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic ́s impact. The far-reaching social and economic consequences of this threat are counteracted by organisational and constructional measures to prevent lockdowns and finally illnesses and deaths. Corona spaces and voids are introduced as a consistent multi scale approach concerning the pandemics spatial implications and respective measures. These terms are operationalised for urban planning and can be used as an overarching concept to be communicated within cross-sectoral planning tasks. A comparison of Taiwan's and the USA's responses to the outbreak suggests that the coincidence at the beginning of a pandemic can be controlled by institutional precautions. On an urban scale, organisational measures (e.g. contact tracing, quarantine, and lockdown) can be supported by constructional ones concerning e.g. transport, public spaces, urban agriculture, and offices aimed at crowding reduction. If appropriate measures are applied, urban density does not seem to increase spreading the virus, whereby a regression analysis based on data of districts in Germany shows no relationship between population density and COVID-19 deaths. Lockdown prevention should be a planning goal and multifunctional approaches that integrate aspects of virus resilience should be favoured over the monothematic urban development approach (Leitbild) of a virus resilient city. Urban planning can contribute to the mitigation of future outbreaks by including pandemic preparedness in planning frameworks

HSx Homeland Security: Changing Role of the Individual

Includes a list of related educational materials

$1.00 per RT #BostonMarathon #PrayForBoston: analyzing fake content on Twitter

This study found that 29% of the most viral content on Twitter during the Boston bombing crisis were rumors and fake content.AbstractOnline social media has emerged as one of the prominent channels for dissemination of information during real world events. Malicious content is posted online during events, which can result in damage, chaos and monetary losses in the real world. We analyzed one such media i.e. Twitter, for content generated during the event of Boston Marathon Blasts, that occurred on April, 15th, 2013. A lot of fake content and malicious profiles originated on Twitter network during this event. The aim of this work is to perform in-depth characterization of what factors influenced in malicious content and profiles becoming viral. Our results showed that 29% of the most viral content on Twitter, during the Boston crisis were rumors and fake content; while 51% was generic opinions and comments; and rest was true information. We found that large number of users with high social reputation and verified accounts were responsible for spreading the fake content. Next, we used regression prediction model, to verify that, overall impact of all users who propagate the fake content at a given time, can be used to estimate the growth of that content in future. Many malicious accounts were created on Twitter during the Boston event, that were later suspended by Twitter. We identified over six thousand such user profiles, we observed that the creation of such profiles surged considerably right after the blasts occurred. We identified closed community structure and star formation in the interaction network of these suspended profiles amongst themselves

Between a Rock and a Cell Phone: Social Media Use during Mass Protests in Iran, Tunisia and Egypt

In this paper we examine the use of social media, and especially Twitter, in Iran, Tunisia and Egypt during the mass political demonstrations and protests in June 2009, December 2010 - January 2011, and February 2011, respectively. We compare this usage with methods and findings from other studies on the use of Twitter in emergency situations, such as natural and man-made disasters. We draw on our own experiences and participant-observations as an eyewitness in Iran (first author), and on Twitter data from Iran, Tunisia and Egypt. In these three cases, Twitter filled a unique technology and communication gap at least partially. We summarize suggested directions for future research with a view of placing this work in the larger context of social media use in conditions of crisis and social convergence

An overview study of twitter in the UK local government

Copyright @ 2012 Brunel UniversityMicroblogging applications are becoming a momentous element of the public sector social media agenda. The potential of Twitter to update the public with frequent, concise and real-time content has motivated many pubic authorities to create their accounts, thus generating an interesting topic for research. This paper seeks to make an empirical and methodological contribution to this new body of knowledge by presenting an overview study of general Twitter accounts maintained by UK local government authorities. Over 296,000 tweets were collected from the 187officially listed local government accounts. The analysis was conducted in two stages: an examination of the Twitter networks developed by the accounts was followed by a structural analysis of the tweets. The combination of online research and social media analytics techniques enabled us to reach important conclusions about the use of Twitter by those authorities. The findings indicate high level of maturity of Twitter in the UK local government and point to several directions for further increasing the impact and visibility of those accounts within a social media strategy

Advances in Social Media Research:Past, Present and Future

Social media comprises communication websites that facilitate relationship forming between users from diverse backgrounds, resulting in a rich social structure. User generated content encourages inquiry and decision-making. Given the relevance of social media to various stakeholders, it has received significant attention from researchers of various fields, including information systems. There exists no comprehensive review that integrates and synthesises the findings of literature on social media. This study discusses the findings of 132 papers (in selected IS journals) on social media and social networking published between 1997 and 2017. Most papers reviewed here examine the behavioural side of social media, investigate the aspect of reviews and recommendations, and study its integration for organizational purposes. Furthermore, many studies have investigated the viability of online communities/social media as a marketing medium, while others have explored various aspects of social media, including the risks associated with its use, the value that it creates, and the negative stigma attached to it within workplaces. The use of social media for information sharing during critical events as well as for seeking and/or rendering help has also been investigated in prior research. Other contexts include political and public administration, and the comparison between traditional and social media. Overall, our study identifies multiple emergent themes in the existing corpus, thereby furthering our understanding of advances in social media research. The integrated view of the extant literature that our study presents can help avoid duplication by future researchers, whilst offering fruitful lines of enquiry to help shape research for this emerging field