Content Dissemination in Mobile Social Networks

Mobile social networking(MSN) has emerged as an effective platform for social network users to pervasively disseminate the contents such as news, tips, book information, music, video and so on. In content dissemination, mobile social network users receive content or information from their friends, acquaintances or neighbors, and selectively forward the content or information to others. The content generators and receivers have different motivation and requirements to disseminate the contents according to the properties of the contents, which makes it a challenging and meaningful problem to effectively disseminate the content to the appropriate users. In this dissertation, the typical content dissemination scenarios in MSNs are investigated. According to the content properties, the corresponding user requirements are analyzed. First, a Bayesian framework is formulated to model the factors that influence users behavior on streaming video dissemination. An effective dissemination path detection algorithm is derived to detect the reliable and efficient video transmission paths. Second, the authorized content is investigated. We analyze the characteristics of the authorized content, and model the dissemination problem as a new graph problem, namely, Maximum Weighted Connected subgraph with node Quota (MWCQ), and propose two effective algorithms to solve it. Third, the authorized content dissemination problem in Opportunistic Social Networks(OSNs) is studied, based on the prediction of social connection pattern. We then analyze the influence of social connections on the content acquirement, and propose a novel approach, User Set Selection(USS) algorithm, to help social users to achieve fast and accurate content acquirement through social connections

Towards Understanding Cyberbullying Behavior in a Semi-Anonymous Social Network

Cyberbullying has emerged as an important and growing social problem, wherein people use online social networks and mobile phones to bully victims with offensive text, images, audio and video on a 247 basis. This paper studies negative user behavior in the Ask.fm social network, a popular new site that has led to many cases of cyberbullying, some leading to suicidal behavior.We examine the occurrence of negative words in Ask.fms question+answer profiles along with the social network of likes of questions+answers. We also examine properties of users with cutting behavior in this social network

Device-Centric Cooperation in Mobile Networks

The increasing popularity of applications such as video streaming in today's mobile devices introduces higher demand for throughput, and puts a strain especially on cellular links. Cooperation among mobile devices by exploiting both cellular and local area connections is a promising approach to meet the increasing demand. In this paper, we consider that a group of cooperative mobile devices, exploiting both cellular and local area links and within proximity of each other, are interested in the same video content. Traditional network control algorithms introduce high overhead and delay in this setup as the network control and cooperation decisions are made in a source-centric manner. Instead, we develop a device-centric stochastic cooperation scheme. Our device-centric scheme; DcC allows mobile devices to make control decisions such as flow control, scheduling, and cooperation without loss of optimality. Thanks to being device-centric, DcC reduces; (i) overhead; i.e., the number of control packets that should be transmitted over cellular links, so cellular links are used more efficiently, and (ii) the amount of delay that each packet experiences, which improves quality of service. The simulation results demonstrate the benefits of DcC

Will mobile video become the killer application for 3G? - an empirical model for media convergence

Mobile carriers have continually rolled out 3G mobile video applications to increase their revenue and profits. The presumption is that video is superior to the already successful SMS, ringtones, and pictures, and can create greater value to users. However, recent market surveys revealed contradicting results. Motivated by this discrepancy, we propose in this paper a parsimonious model for user acceptance of mobile entertainment as digital convergence. Integrating research on Information Systems, Flow, and Media Psychology, we take a unique approach to user acceptance of digital convergence - platform migration. Our key proposition is that the interaction between media types and the platform-specific constraints is the key determinant of user evaluation. Particularly, users' involvement in the media is determined by both the entertaining time span on the original platform and the attentional constraint of the new platform. The mismatch between the two spans can result in lower level involvement, which in turn cause no or even negative user emotional responses. The model was tested with empirical data. We discuss the theoretical contributions, strategic and design implications, and future research directions derived from this theoretical framewor

Facebook (A)Live? Are Live Social Broadcasts Really Broadcasts?

The era of live-broadcast is back but with two major changes. First, unlike traditional TV broadcasts, content is now streamed over the Internet enabling it to reach a wider audience. Second, due to various user-generated content platforms it has become possible for anyone to get involved, streaming their own content to the world. This emerging trend of going live usually happens via social platforms, where users perform live social broadcasts predominantly from their mobile devices, allowing their friends (and the general public) to engage with the stream in real-time. With the growing popularity of such platforms, the burden on the current Internet infrastructure is therefore expected to multiply. With this in mind, we explore one such prominent platform - Facebook Live. We gather 3TB of data, representing one month of global activity and explore the characteristics of live social broadcast. From this, we derive simple yet effective principles which can decrease the network burden. We then dissect global and hyper-local properties of the video while on-air, by capturing the geography of the broadcasters or the users who produce the video and the viewers or the users who interact with it. Finally, we study the social engagement while the video is live and distinguish the key aspects when the same video goes on-demand. A common theme throughout the paper is that, despite its name, many attributes of Facebook Live deviate from both the concepts of live and broadcast.Comment: Published at The Web Conference 2018 (WWW 2018). Please cite the WWW versio