A field experiment on information sharing in social networks

In this paper, we study information sharing through text messages among rural Mozambicans with access to mobile money. For this purpose, we conducted a lab-in-the-field experiment involving exogeneously assigned information links. In the base game mobile money users receive an SMS containing information on how to redeem a voucher for mobile money. They are then given an opportunity to share this information with other subjects. We find that participants have a low propensity to redeem the voucher. They nonetheless share the information with others, and many subjects share information they do not use themselves, consistent with warm glow. We observe that there is more information sharing when communication is entirely anonymous, and we uncover no evidence of homophily in information sharing. We introduce various treatments: varying the cost of information sharing; being shamed for not sending vouchers; and allowing subjects to appropriate (part of) the value of the shared information. All these treatments decrease information sharing. The main implication is that, to encourage information sharing, the best is to keep it simple.publishersversionpublishe

An Investigation of Predictors of Information Diffusion in Social Media: Evidence from Sentiment Mining of Twitter Messages

Social media have facilitated information sharing in social networks. Previous research shows that sentiment of text influences its diffusion in social media. Each emotion can be located on a three-dimensional space formed by dimensions of valence (positive–negative), arousal (passive / calm–active / excited), and tension (tense–relaxed). While previous research has investigated the effect of emotional valence on information diffusion in social media, the effect of emotional arousal remains unexplored. This study examines how emotional arousal influences information diffusion in social media using a sentiment mining approach. We propose a research model and test it using data collected from Twitter

Perceptions of Undue Influence Shed Light on the Folk Conception of Autonomy

Advances in psychology and neuroscience have elucidated the social aspects of human agency, leading to a broad shift in our thinking about fundamental concepts such as autonomy and responsibility. Here, we address a critical aspect of this inquiry by investigating how people consider the socio-relational nature of their own agency,particularly the influence of others on their perceived control over their decisions and actions. Specifically, in a series of studies using contrastive vignettes, we examine public attitudes about when external influences on everyday decisions are perceived as “undue” – that is, as undermining the control conditions for these decisions to be considered autonomous – vs. when they are perceived as appropriate and even supportive of autonomous decision-making. We found that the influence of preauthorized agents – individuals and institutions with whom we share a worldview –was judged to be less undue than non-preauthorized agents, even after controlling for the familiarity of the agent. These effects persisted irrespective of the extent to which respondents identified as communitarian or individualistic, and were consistent across two distinct scenarios. We also found that external influences that were rational were perceived as less undue than those that were arational. Our study opens new avenues of inquiry into the “folk conception” of autonomy, and we discuss the implications of our findings for the ethics of public policies designed to influence decisions and for information sharing in social networks

Information-Sharing and Privacy in Social Networks

We present a new model for reasoning about the way information is shared among friends in a social network, and the resulting ways in which it spreads. Our model formalizes the intuition that revealing personal information in social settings involves a trade-off between the benefits of sharing information with friends, and the risks that additional gossiping will propagate it to people with whom one is not on friendly terms. We study the behavior of rational agents in such a situation, and we characterize the existence and computability of stable information-sharing networks, in which agents do not have an incentive to change the partners with whom they share information. We analyze the implications of these stable networks for social welfare, and the resulting fragmentation of the social network

Approximate Equilibrium and Incentivizing Social Coordination

We study techniques to incentivize self-interested agents to form socially desirable solutions in scenarios where they benefit from mutual coordination. Towards this end, we consider coordination games where agents have different intrinsic preferences but they stand to gain if others choose the same strategy as them. For non-trivial versions of our game, stable solutions like Nash Equilibrium may not exist, or may be socially inefficient even when they do exist. This motivates us to focus on designing efficient algorithms to compute (almost) stable solutions like Approximate Equilibrium that can be realized if agents are provided some additional incentives. Our results apply in many settings like adoption of new products, project selection, and group formation, where a central authority can direct agents towards a strategy but agents may defect if they have better alternatives. We show that for any given instance, we can either compute a high quality approximate equilibrium or a near-optimal solution that can be stabilized by providing small payments to some players. We then generalize our model to encompass situations where player relationships may exhibit complementarities and present an algorithm to compute an Approximate Equilibrium whose stability factor is linear in the degree of complementarity. Our results imply that a little influence is necessary in order to ensure that selfish players coordinate and form socially efficient solutions.Comment: A preliminary version of this work will appear in AAAI-14: Twenty-Eighth Conference on Artificial Intelligenc

How things fit together: a general model of the information behaviour field

Anyone new to a research field may easily feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of new concepts and must struggle with how things fit together. The aim of this paper is to initiate a discussion about a new general model for information behaviour as a field, and to serve both as an introduction and as a tool to highlight understudied areas within the field. The paper compares previous general models, textbooks, and a subject index with standard definitions of information behaviour. Based on the analysis, a new general model of the information behaviour field is developed. A comparative analysis was used. The paper argues that the existing general models of information behaviour do not reflect the breadth of the field as seen in community-accepted definitions of information behaviour. The analysis also shows that topics like information discovery and information seeking are overrepresented in textbooks and subject indices. The new model illustrates the breadth of the field, explains how topics fit together and highlights research areas that are in special need of attention.Peer Reviewe

Web tool railway museum

Treball desenvolupat dins el marc del programa 'European Project Semester' i l'"International Design Project Semester".This project is a product of collaboration between the EPS students at EPSEVG and Catalonia Railway Museum. The goal was to create a web tool, test it and launch it. The aim of the web tool is to facilitate the communication between railway museums on a global level. A need for such a tool is present because at the moment there is no existing platform for a fast, private and simple communication between railway museums. The web tool functions like a forum, the message board will enable the possibility to have discussions, group chats and other functions that can be expected in a forum. AngularJS, as the backend framework, and Lumen, for the backend, were used to develop the web tool. The code is documented well, to make sure that next developers have an easy start and are able to implement new features quickly. Since this is a forum that will be used by colleagues on an international level the main language will be English, with a possibility to translate it to any other language. The web tool gets translated by the Google translate widget, owned and powered by Google. Before the launching of the web tool a user survey was complete. The test persons included museum personnel, students, usability professors, family and friends. After a mostly positive feedback, few corrections were made before the web tool, with the name "Elephorum", was launched

How Agent-based modeling can help to foster sustainability projects

[Abstract] The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations require relevant social changes that sometimes involve the development of innovative projects that cause rejection and confrontation. Agent-Based Models (ABM) are powerful tools to represent the behavior of systems, and they have become valuable for the social sciences as they can simulate the behavior of a society under different conditions. Superblocks are innovative city projects that reorganize urban space and minimize private motorized transport. In this paper, we present an ABM that simulates the implantation of superblocks in two Spanish cities: Vitoria-Gasteiz and Barcelona. The interest of this model is to provide policymakers with relevant scientific information that can be used to support their planning and decision-making processes by running possible alternative policy scenarios. This paper presents the details of the designed model and the simulation of different policy scenarios to increase the acceptability rates of citizens about the project, demonstrating how the model takes into account local differences and its usefulness for those political leaders from other cities interested in implementing this type of project.Xunta de Galicia; ED431C2018/34Xunta de Galicia; ED431G2019/01The work on this document has been supported by Horizon 2020 of the European Commission SMARTEES project (grant agreement no. 7639). We also wish to acknowledge the funding received from the Xunta de Galicia, together with the ERDF funds of the European Union, through its grants to research groups (Grant no. ED431C 2018/34) and CITIC, as a Research Center of the University System of Galicia (Grant no. ED431G 2019/01