Performance Analysis of Online Social Platforms

We introduce an original mathematical model to analyze the diffusion of posts within a generic online social platform. Each user of such a platform has his own Wall and Newsfeed, as well as his own self-posting and re-posting activity. As a main result, using our developed model, we derive in closed form the probabilities that posts originating from a given user are found on the Wall and Newsfeed of any other. These probabilities are the solution of a linear system of equations. Conditions of existence of the solution are provided, and two ways of solving the system are proposed, one using matrix inversion and another using fixed-point iteration. Comparisons with simulations show the accuracy of our model and its robustness with respect to the modeling assumptions. Hence, this article introduces a novel measure which allows to rank users by their influence on the social platform, by taking into account not only the social graph structure, but also the platform design, user activity (self- and re-posting), as well as competition among posts.Comment: Preliminary version of accepted paper at INFOCOM 2019 (Paris, France

From Electocracy to Democracy: Coalition, Cohesion, and Function

Generally, democracy composes the elements of election, rights and liberty, middle class, and the rules of law to govern the state and people. Malaysia had limited experience of a democracy that was absent from the elements above. It had its first election during the colonial era that dictates the function of an election.  Later, the election becomes routine every five years that makes it an electocracy or a political culture lacks political literacy. The post-independence context of a strong leader and a dominant party alliance to rule the state and society resulted in making political analysts criticizing Malaysia as a state of the quasi, semi, and syncretic democracy. The recent power transition with no record of violence in Fourteen General Election (2018) proves that the previous label of democracy in Malaysia is obsolete. Therefore, the analysis tool of assessing Malaysian politics is still dormant with the Western perspective of the two-party system, the end of racial politics hence assuming the beginning of an ideology-based party and the belief that the new Malaysia will fit in the western mold of democracy. The robust information technology via social media harvesting new challenges for democracy in Malaysia. It cannot escape the spread of fake news or disinformation to influence voters. The game of fake news has put Malaysia as a state of electocracy full of unskilled politicians to govern the multiethnic nation

Vector-Borne Diseases Stakeholder Mapping in Finland : A One Health Approach

Climate change, increasing human population, urbanization, industrialization and the gradual depletion of natural resources affects the health of humans, animals, and ecosystems around the globe. The complex and wicked health problems arising at the human-animal-ecosystem interphase, such as the (re)emergence, transmission, and management of both novel and traditional zoonoses and vector-born-diseases, requires enhanced multisectoral and multi-leveled interactions and collaboration between different One Health stakeholders. Previous research in Finland around the topic of vector-borne diseases has primarily been focused on vector, host, and disease epidemiology: changes in disease occurrence and distribution of hosts and vectors, nationally. However very little attention has been given to stakeholder networks studies, information- and resource-sharing, nor on how different VBD actors and stakeholders interact in Finland. Thus, the aim of this master’s thesis is to map and analyze the current and missing stakeholder/actor interactions and information flow related to vector-borne diseases and their management in Finland, within a One Health context. In addition, the objective is also to discuss and reflect on the future of a possible formal VBD/One Health-network in Finland and what are the chances, challenges and means of establishing one. In conclusion, this research plays a pivotal role in addressing the growing issue of vector-borne diseases nationally and globally, in addition to enhancing VBD research, management, surveillance, control and prevention in Finland. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were chosen as the primary methodology for this master’s thesis. More specifically, a qualitative research method, focusing on identifying actors, resources, multi-actor dynamics and multi-actor interactions (ARDI) was used to analyze the data. The qualitative data in this research consists of 10 semi-structured VBD/OH stakeholder interviews of Finnish professionals collected between October 2021 - December 2021. The results of this study indicate the importance of multisectoral and multi-leveled stakeholder collaboration related to vector-borne disease research, management, surveillance, control and prevention in Finland. In total 139 potential direct and indirect VBD and One Health stakeholders were identified in this research. Twenty (20) stakeholders, from varying fields were recognized as key VBD/OH actors in Finland. The results in this study suggest that VBD/OH stakeholders in Finland are to some extent interdisciplinary and multisectoral, but the biggest emphasis among different stakeholders still remains in human health, resulting in neglect of other fields of study, especially social sciences and humanities. Currently VBD/OH networks in Finland are mostly built upon unofficial personal connections relying heavily on a few Finnish individual key experts and research projects with external funding, resulting in uncertainty in the continuity of collaborations. There also seems to be a lack of higher-level coordination of VBD/OH collaboration activities in addition to the lack of collaboration between Finnish governmental agencies and other lower-level stakeholders, mainly due to lack of fiscal and human resources. The results of this research indicate that stakeholders’ collaboration with the private sector, independent agencies, NGOs, professional and scientific associations and other foundations in Finland is very limited. Furthermore, all ten interviewed stakeholders unanimously support the formation of a formal VBD/OH network in Finland to enhance stakeholder collaboration, information sharing and data management related to vector-borne diseases in Finland. The findings of this research strongly suggest the establishment of a formal multidisciplinary and multi-leveled OH vector-borne disease expert network in Finland with higher level coordination and sufficient fiscal and skilled human resources. However, further investigations are still needed to gain a deeper understanding of formal One Health networks in Europe, private actor engagement and public-private partnerships in strengthening VBD management, in addition to investigations on (re)emerging vectors, vector-borne diseases and climate change in Finland

The construction of the meanings of #coronavirus on Twitter: An analysis of the initial reactions of the Italian people

The first months of 2020 saw the coronavirus pandemic explode. Moving from China, it arrived in Europe and hit Italy. The place where the debate around it exploded was the media ecosystem. In a short time, it was an explosion of tweets related to the hashtag #coronavirus on Twitter. With the aim of reconstructing the meanings of the hashtag and the content, in terms of sentiment and opinions, of the reactions of the Italians, we collected in a large size corpus, the hundred thousand Italian tweets containing the #coronavirus produced during the media hype period from the Twitter repository (February 24th - 28th, 2020). Media hype period was discovered by digging in the online articles of ‘la Repubblica', based on the presence of the words: coronavirus and Italy. The media hype is February 26th. The corpus underwent Emotional Text Mining (ETM), an unsupervised methodology, which allows social profiling based on communication. The study of the word chosen to talk about a topic and their co-occurrence allows the understanding of people’s symbolizations, representations, and sentiment, about the coronavirus. In a retrospective logic, this mechanism allows us to reconstruct the sensemaking and nuances of meaning attributed by users to the coronavirus hashtag

Workshop series on the role of institutions in East Asian development: Institutional foundations of innovation and competitiveness in East Asia

The discussion paper summarizes the results of a workshop that focussed on the institutional foundations of innovation and competitiveness in East Asia. The following papers are contained: 'Transitional Institutions, Institutional Complementarities and Economic Performance in China. A "Varieties of Capitalism" Approach', 'The Current State of Research on Networks in China's Business System', 'Recent Changes to Korea's Innovation Governance', 'Standardization and Institutional Complementarities in Japan - Empirical Results from SAP R/3 Implementations in Japanese Automotive Suppliers'. --East Asia,Japan,China,Korea,institutional change,competitiveness,innovation

The European Citizens’ Initiative. New Opportunities for European Civil Actors?

The European Union is often criticized for its democratic deficit. This criticism has led to a process of including civil society in European governance through consultations, round table discussions and civil dialogue. These steps of inclusion have been oriented towards organized civil society. This study explores the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) a new tool for participation available to all European citizens. The ECI is considered to take a step further in the democratic development of the European Union by inviting all citizens to not only participate but also independently propose legislation. The study aims to understand the opportunities the ECI offer and how civil actors are using these opportunities. A theoretical framework was designed combining theories of Political Opportunity Structures (POS), Europeanization and Usage of Europe. The ECI was investigated through a within case comparison of pilot and official initiatives. A content analysis, a survey and interviews were conducted to approach the initiatives. The findings of the study suggests that the ECI is perceived as an opportunity structure in terms of a step towards direct democracy, policy influence and a stepping-stone for future ambitions. Civil actors have seized the opportunities through strategic, cognitive and legitimizing usage

GIS-based approach for optimization of onshore wind park infrastructure alignment in Finland

Wind power is a rapidly developing, low-emission form of energy production. In Fin-land, the official objective is to increase wind power capacity from the current 1 005 MW up to 3 500–4 000 MW by 2025. By the end of April 2015, the total capacity of all wind power project being planned in Finland had surpassed 11 000 MW. As the amount of projects in Finland is record high, an increasing amount of infrastructure is also being planned and constructed. Traditionally, these planning operations are conducted using manual and labor-intensive work methods that are prone to subjectivity. This study introduces a GIS-based methodology for determining optimal paths to sup-port the planning of onshore wind park infrastructure alignment in Nordanå-Lövböle wind park located on the island of Kemiönsaari in Southwest Finland. The presented methodology utilizes a least-cost path (LCP) algorithm for searching of optimal paths within a high resolution real-world terrain dataset derived from airborne lidar scannings. In addition, planning data is used to provide a realistic planning framework for the anal-ysis. In order to produce realistic results, the physiographic and planning datasets are standardized and weighted according to qualitative suitability assessments by utilizing methods and practices offered by multi-criteria evaluation (MCE). The results are pre-sented as scenarios to correspond various different planning objectives. Finally, the methodology is documented by using tools of Business Process Management (BPM). The results show that the presented methodology can be effectively used to search and identify extensive, 20 to 35 kilometers long networks of paths that correspond to certain optimization objectives in the study area. The utilization of high-resolution terrain data produces a more objective and more detailed path alignment plan. This study demon-strates that the presented methodology can be practically applied to support a wind power infrastructure alignment planning process. The six-phase structure of the method-ology allows straightforward incorporation of different optimization objectives. The methodology responds well to combining quantitative and qualitative data. Additional-ly, the careful documentation presents an example of how the methodology can be eval-uated and developed as a business process. This thesis also shows that more emphasis on the research of algorithm-based, more objective methods for the planning of infrastruc-ture alignment is desirable, as technological development has only recently started to realize the potential of these computational methods.Siirretty Doriast

On the functions and consequences of the Internet for social movements and voluntary associations

"Voluntary associations are particularly prone to embrace the new Net technologies, because on the basis of these new tools, they are better able to be what they always aspired to be: democratically constituted collectivities relying on a complex interplay between internal and external, vertical and horizontal, upward and downward, informal and formal, bilateral and multilateral communications. As the most flexible, adaptive of all media - the Internet has very different functions and consequences under different environmental conditions, so that it can be fitted into almost existing socio-cultural settings and is more likely to consolidate and strengthen them than to act as a causal agent of change. Likewise, the conclusion is warranted that primary face to face interactions as well as conventional mass media communications will not become obsolete with expanding computer-supported interactions. On the contrary, they may have to be expanded and intensified before the full potentials of online communication can be exploited." (author's abstract)Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht die Funktionen und Konsequenzen des Internet für soziale Bewegungen und Freiwilligen-Vereinigungen. Beide neigen besonders dazu, die neuen Netztechnologien zu verwenden, da sie die Grundlage dafür bilden, dass die Gruppen leichter in der Lage sind, das zu sein, was schon immer angestrebt wurde, nämlich demokratisch konstituierte Gemeinschaften, die auf eine komplexe wechselseitige Beziehung zwischen interner und externer, vertikaler und horizontaler, informeller und formeller, bilateraler und multilateraler Kommunikation aufbauen. Als das flexibelste aller Medien bietet das Internet viele verschiedene Funktionen und Konsequenzen, so dass es in fast alle soziokulturellen Zusammenhänge passt und diese eher stärken und konsolidieren kann anstatt die Ursache für deren Wandel zu sein. Es wird geschlussfolgert, dass weder die Kommunikation von Angesicht zu Angesicht noch die konventionelle massenmediale Kommunikation durch die expandierenden computergestützten Interaktionen obsolet wird. Ganz im Gegenteil, zunächst müssen diese expandieren und intensiviert werden, um das ganze Potential der Online-Kommunikation nutzen zu können. (ICDÜbers