24,118 research outputs found
Online networks and subjective well-being
We argue that the use of online networks may threaten subjective well-being
in several ways, due to the inherent attributes of Internet-mediated
interaction and through its effects on social trust and sociability. We test
our hypotheses on a representative sample of the Italian population. We find a
significantly negative correlation between online networking and well-being.
This result is partially confirmed after accounting for endogeneity. We explore
the direct and indirect effects of the use of social networking sites (SNS) on
well-being in a SEM analysis. We find that online networking plays a positive
role in subjective well-being through its impact on physical interactions,
whereas SNS use is associated with lower social trust. The overall effect of
networking on individual welfare is significantly negative.Comment: 40 page
Causal Inference in Disease Spread across a Heterogeneous Social System
Diffusion processes are governed by external triggers and internal dynamics
in complex systems. Timely and cost-effective control of infectious disease
spread critically relies on uncovering the underlying diffusion mechanisms,
which is challenging due to invisible causality between events and their
time-evolving intensity. We infer causal relationships between infections and
quantify the reflexivity of a meta-population, the level of feedback on event
occurrences by its internal dynamics (likelihood of a regional outbreak
triggered by previous cases). These are enabled by our new proposed model, the
Latent Influence Point Process (LIPP) which models disease spread by
incorporating macro-level internal dynamics of meta-populations based on human
mobility. We analyse 15-year dengue cases in Queensland, Australia. From our
causal inference, outbreaks are more likely driven by statewide global
diffusion over time, leading to complex behavior of disease spread. In terms of
reflexivity, precursory growth and symmetric decline in populous regions is
attributed to slow but persistent feedback on preceding outbreaks via
inter-group dynamics, while abrupt growth but sharp decline in peripheral areas
is led by rapid but inconstant feedback via intra-group dynamics. Our proposed
model reveals probabilistic causal relationships between discrete events based
on intra- and inter-group dynamics and also covers direct and indirect
diffusion processes (contact-based and vector-borne disease transmissions).Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1711.0635
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