29,803 research outputs found
Uncovering the Wider Structure of Extreme Right Communities Spanning Popular Online Networks
Recent years have seen increased interest in the online presence of extreme
right groups. Although originally composed of dedicated websites, the online
extreme right milieu now spans multiple networks, including popular social
media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Ideally therefore, any
contemporary analysis of online extreme right activity requires the
consideration of multiple data sources, rather than being restricted to a
single platform. We investigate the potential for Twitter to act as a gateway
to communities within the wider online network of the extreme right, given its
facility for the dissemination of content. A strategy for representing
heterogeneous network data with a single homogeneous network for the purpose of
community detection is presented, where these inherently dynamic communities
are tracked over time. We use this strategy to discover and analyze persistent
English and German language extreme right communities.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figures. Due to use of "sigchi" template, minor changes
were made to ensure 10 page limit was not exceeded. Minor clarifications in
Introduction, Data and Methodology section
Uncovering the wider structure of extreme right communities spanning popular online networks
AbstractRecent years have seen increased interest in the online presence of extreme right groups. Although originally composed of dedicated websites, the online extreme right milieu now spans multiple networks, including popular social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Ideally therefore, any contemporary analysis of online extreme right activity requires the consideration of multiple data sources, rather than being restricted to a single platform.We investigate the potential for Twitter to act as one possible gateway to communities within the wider online network of the extreme right, given its facility for the dissemination of content. A strategy for representing heterogeneous network data with a single homogeneous network for the purpose of community detection is presented, where these inherently dynamic communities are tracked over time. We use this strategy to discover and analyze persistent English and German language extreme right communities.Authored by Derek OâCallaghan, Derek Greene, Maura Conway, Joe Carthy and Padraig Cunningham
Missing data in multiplex networks: a preliminary study
A basic problem in the analysis of social networks is missing data. When a
network model does not accurately capture all the actors or relationships in
the social system under study, measures computed on the network and ultimately
the final outcomes of the analysis can be severely distorted. For this reason,
researchers in social network analysis have characterised the impact of
different types of missing data on existing network measures. Recently a lot of
attention has been devoted to the study of multiple-network systems, e.g.,
multiplex networks. In these systems missing data has an even more significant
impact on the outcomes of the analyses. However, to the best of our knowledge,
no study has focused on this problem yet. This work is a first step in the
direction of understanding the impact of missing data in multiple networks. We
first discuss the main reasons for missingness in these systems, then we
explore the relation between various types of missing information and their
effect on network properties. We provide initial experimental evidence based on
both real and synthetic data.Comment: 7 page
Open Data, Grey Data, and Stewardship: Universities at the Privacy Frontier
As universities recognize the inherent value in the data they collect and
hold, they encounter unforeseen challenges in stewarding those data in ways
that balance accountability, transparency, and protection of privacy, academic
freedom, and intellectual property. Two parallel developments in academic data
collection are converging: (1) open access requirements, whereby researchers
must provide access to their data as a condition of obtaining grant funding or
publishing results in journals; and (2) the vast accumulation of 'grey data'
about individuals in their daily activities of research, teaching, learning,
services, and administration. The boundaries between research and grey data are
blurring, making it more difficult to assess the risks and responsibilities
associated with any data collection. Many sets of data, both research and grey,
fall outside privacy regulations such as HIPAA, FERPA, and PII. Universities
are exploiting these data for research, learning analytics, faculty evaluation,
strategic decisions, and other sensitive matters. Commercial entities are
besieging universities with requests for access to data or for partnerships to
mine them. The privacy frontier facing research universities spans open access
practices, uses and misuses of data, public records requests, cyber risk, and
curating data for privacy protection. This paper explores the competing values
inherent in data stewardship and makes recommendations for practice, drawing on
the pioneering work of the University of California in privacy and information
security, data governance, and cyber risk.Comment: Final published version, Sept 30, 201
Social Mediaâs impact on Intellectual Property Rights
This is a draft chapter. The final version is available in Handbook of Research on Counterfeiting and Illicit Trade, edited by Peggy E. Chaudhry, published in 2017 by Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, https://doi.org/10.4337/9781785366451. This material is for private use only, and cannot be used for any other purpose without further permission of the publisher.Peer reviewe
Approximate Closest Community Search in Networks
Recently, there has been significant interest in the study of the community
search problem in social and information networks: given one or more query
nodes, find densely connected communities containing the query nodes. However,
most existing studies do not address the "free rider" issue, that is, nodes far
away from query nodes and irrelevant to them are included in the detected
community. Some state-of-the-art models have attempted to address this issue,
but not only are their formulated problems NP-hard, they do not admit any
approximations without restrictive assumptions, which may not always hold in
practice.
In this paper, given an undirected graph G and a set of query nodes Q, we
study community search using the k-truss based community model. We formulate
our problem of finding a closest truss community (CTC), as finding a connected
k-truss subgraph with the largest k that contains Q, and has the minimum
diameter among such subgraphs. We prove this problem is NP-hard. Furthermore,
it is NP-hard to approximate the problem within a factor , for
any . However, we develop a greedy algorithmic framework,
which first finds a CTC containing Q, and then iteratively removes the furthest
nodes from Q, from the graph. The method achieves 2-approximation to the
optimal solution. To further improve the efficiency, we make use of a compact
truss index and develop efficient algorithms for k-truss identification and
maintenance as nodes get eliminated. In addition, using bulk deletion
optimization and local exploration strategies, we propose two more efficient
algorithms. One of them trades some approximation quality for efficiency while
the other is a very efficient heuristic. Extensive experiments on 6 real-world
networks show the effectiveness and efficiency of our community model and
search algorithms
The Role of Gender in Social Network Organization
The digital traces we leave behind when engaging with the modern world offer
an interesting lens through which we study behavioral patterns as expression of
gender. Although gender differentiation has been observed in a number of
settings, the majority of studies focus on a single data stream in isolation.
Here we use a dataset of high resolution data collected using mobile phones, as
well as detailed questionnaires, to study gender differences in a large cohort.
We consider mobility behavior and individual personality traits among a group
of more than university students. We also investigate interactions among
them expressed via person-to-person contacts, interactions on online social
networks, and telecommunication. Thus, we are able to study the differences
between male and female behavior captured through a multitude of channels for a
single cohort. We find that while the two genders are similar in a number of
aspects, there are robust deviations that include multiple facets of social
interactions, suggesting the existence of inherent behavioral differences.
Finally, we quantify how aspects of an individual's characteristics and social
behavior reveals their gender by posing it as a classification problem. We ask:
How well can we distinguish between male and female study participants based on
behavior alone? Which behavioral features are most predictive
Cloaked Facebook pages: Exploring fake Islamist propaganda in social media
This research analyses cloaked Facebook pages that are created to spread political propaganda by cloaking a user profile and imitating the identity of a political opponent in order to spark hateful and aggressive reactions. This inquiry is pursued through a multi-sited online ethnographic case study of Danish Facebook pages disguised as radical Islamist pages, which provoked racist and anti-Muslim reactions as well as negative sentiments towards refugees and immigrants in Denmark in general. Drawing on Jessie Danielsâ critical insights into cloaked websites, this research furthermore analyses the epistemological, methodological and conceptual challenges of online propaganda. It enhances our understanding of disinformation and propaganda in an increasingly interactive social media environment and contributes to a critical inquiry into social media and subversive politics
- âŠ