An integrated ranking algorithm for efficient information computing in social networks

Social networks have ensured the expanding disproportion between the face of WWW stored traditionally in search engine repositories and the actual ever changing face of Web. Exponential growth of web users and the ease with which they can upload contents on web highlights the need of content controls on material published on the web. As definition of search is changing, socially-enhanced interactive search methodologies are the need of the hour. Ranking is pivotal for efficient web search as the search performance mainly depends upon the ranking results. In this paper new integrated ranking model based on fused rank of web object based on popularity factor earned over only valid interlinks from multiple social forums is proposed. This model identifies relationships between web objects in separate social networks based on the object inheritance graph. Experimental study indicates the effectiveness of proposed Fusion based ranking algorithm in terms of better search results.Comment: 14 pages, International Journal on Web Service Computing (IJWSC), Vol.3, No.1, March 201

Towards a conceptualization of casual protest participation: Parsing a case from the Save Roşia Montană campaign

There is currently an empirical gap in the literature on protest participation in liberal democracies which has overwhelmingly focused on Western Europe and North America at the expense of Eastern Europe. To contribute to closing that gap, this article reviews findings from a multi-method field study conducted at FânFest, the environmental protest festival designed to boost participation in Save Roşia Montană, the most prominent environmental campaign in Romania. By contrast to its Western counterparts, Romania has seen markedly lower levels of involvement in voluntary organizations that are a key setting for mobilization into collective action. Concurrently, experience with participation in physical protests is limited amongst Romanians. Specifically, the article probes recent indications that social network sites provide new impetus to protest participation as an instrumental means of mobilization. Dwelling on a distinction between experienced and newcomers to protest, results indicate that social network site usage may make possible the casual participation of individuals with prior protest experience who are not activists in a voluntary organization. Whilst this finding may signal a new participatory mode hinging on digitally networked communication which is beginning to be theorized, it confounds expectations pertaining to a net contribution of social network site usage to the participation of newcomers to protest

Event Detection from Social Media Stream: Methods, Datasets and Opportunities

Social media streams contain large and diverse amount of information, ranging from daily-life stories to the latest global and local events and news. Twitter, especially, allows a fast spread of events happening real time, and enables individuals and organizations to stay informed of the events happening now. Event detection from social media data poses different challenges from traditional text and is a research area that has attracted much attention in recent years. In this paper, we survey a wide range of event detection methods for Twitter data stream, helping readers understand the recent development in this area. We present the datasets available to the public. Furthermore, a few research opportunitiesComment: 8 page

SciTech News Volume 71, No. 1 (2017)

Columns and Reports From the Editor 3 Division News Science-Technology Division 5 Chemistry Division 8 Engineering Division Aerospace Section of the Engineering Division 9 Architecture, Building Engineering, Construction and Design Section of the Engineering Division 11 Reviews Sci-Tech Book News Reviews 12 Advertisements IEEE

Storytelling snaps

I am curious how a snapshot captures a moment that can trigger a memory and release a tale. My project will be to create a series of digital images and their stories that trace my case study’s life over his eighty years. Through Jim’s archive images I will select photos of his life, show them to him and record stories from his memories. Jim’s self narrative will be my digital storytelling project created to evoke a time and place linking the past into the present. My work is about storytelling through archive photos. This art form has evolved over time with the landscape of computerisation. Our private images and stories are now being shared across public digital media platforms. I can define my passion through the description used by the Centre for Digital Storytelling (1998) “anyone who has a desire to document life experience, ideas, or feelings through the use of story and digital media

Towards place-based exploration of Instagram: Using co-design to develop an interdisciplinary geovisualization prototype

An abundance of geographic information is hidden within texts and multimedia objects that has the potential to enrich our knowledge about the relationship between people and places. One such example is the geographic information embedded within user-generated content collected and curated by the social media giants. Such geographic data can be encoded either explicitly as geotags or implicitly as geographical references expressed as texts that comprise part of a title or image caption. To use such data for knowledge building there is a need for new mapping interfaces. These interfaces should support both data integration and visualization, and geographical exploration with open-ended discovery. Based on a user scenario on the Via Francigena (a significant European cultural route), we set out to adapt an existing humanities interface to support social and spatial exploration of how the route is perceived. Our dataset was derived from Instagram. We adopted a thinking by doing approach to co-design an interdisciplinary prototype and discuss the six stages of activity, beginning with the definition of the use case and ending in experimentation with a working technology prototype. Through reflection on the process of tool modification and an in-depth exploration of the data encoding, we were better able to understand the strengths and limitations of the data, the tool, and the underlying workflows. This in-depth knowledge helped us to define a set of requirements for tools and data that will serve as a valuable contribution for those engaged in the design of deep mapping interfaces for place-based research