57,449 research outputs found
Attractiveness and activity in Internet communities
Datasets of online communication often take the form of contact sequences --
ordered lists contacts (where a contact is defined as a triple of a sender, a
recipient and a time). We propose measures of attractiveness and activity for
such data sets and analyze these quantities for anonymized contact sequences
from an Internet dating community. For this data set the attractiveness and
activity measures show broad power-law like distributions. Our attractiveness
and activity measures are more strongly correlated in the real-world data than
in our reference model. Effects that indirectly can make active users more
attractive are discussed
Information dynamics shape the networks of Internet-mediated prostitution
Like many other social phenomena, prostitution is increasingly coordinated
over the Internet. The online behavior affects the offline activity; the
reverse is also true. We investigated the reported sexual contacts between
6,624 anonymous escorts and 10,106 sex-buyers extracted from an online
community from its beginning and six years on. These sexual encounters were
also graded and categorized (in terms of the type of sexual activities
performed) by the buyers. From the temporal, bipartite network of posts, we
found a full feedback loop in which high grades on previous posts affect the
future commercial success of the sex-worker, and vice versa. We also found a
peculiar growth pattern in which the turnover of community members and sex
workers causes a sublinear preferential attachment. There is, moreover, a
strong geographic influence on network structure-the network is geographically
clustered but still close to connected, the contacts consistent with the
inverse-square law observed in trading patterns. We also found that the number
of sellers scales sublinearly with city size, so this type of prostitution does
not, comparatively speaking, benefit much from an increasing concentration of
people
Location, safety and (non) strangers in gay menâs narratives on âhook-upâ apps
Hook-up websites and apps are said to be transforming the sexual lives of gay men and have been linked with the apparent erosion of gay publics as the basis for identity politics and social action. This article examines these dynamics in the interview and focus-group talk of gay men living on the economic and geographical margins of metropolitan gay culture. It offers perspectives on the importance of location â class, generation and space â for the experience of digital media, the negotiation of safety, and the new codifications and elaborations on sex with the (non) stranger; a figure who is not alien, yet not familiar, in sexual sociality. Reflecting on these situated perspectives in connection with debates on the erosion of gay publics, this article argues against monolithic framings of gay menâs sexual lives after digital media
Network reachability of real-world contact sequences
We use real-world contact sequences, time-ordered lists of contacts from one
person to another, to study how fast information or disease can spread across
network of contacts. Specifically we measure the reachability time -- the
average shortest time for a series of contacts to spread information between a
reachable pair of vertices (a pair where a chain of contacts exists leading
from one person to the other) -- and the reachability ratio -- the fraction of
reachable vertex pairs. These measures are studied using conditional uniform
graph tests. We conclude, among other things, that the network reachability
depends much on a core where the path lengths are short and communication
frequent, that clustering of the contacts of an edge in time tend to decrease
the reachability, and that the order of the contacts really do make sense for
dynamical spreading processes.Comment: (v2: fig. 1 fixed
Finding influential spreaders from human activity beyond network location
Most centralities proposed for identifying influential spreaders on social
networks to either spread a message or to stop an epidemic require the full
topological information of the network on which spreading occurs. In practice,
however, collecting all connections between agents in social networks can be
hardly achieved. As a result, such metrics could be difficult to apply to real
social networks. Consequently, a new approach for identifying influential
people without the explicit network information is demanded in order to provide
an efficient immunization or spreading strategy, in a practical sense. In this
study, we seek a possible way for finding influential spreaders by using the
social mechanisms of how social connections are formed in real networks. We
find that a reliable immunization scheme can be achieved by asking people how
they interact with each other. From these surveys we find that the
probabilistic tendency to connect to a hub has the strongest predictive power
for influential spreaders among tested social mechanisms. Our observation also
suggests that people who connect different communities is more likely to be an
influential spreader when a network has a strong modular structure. Our finding
implies that not only the effect of network location but also the behavior of
individuals is important to design optimal immunization or spreading schemes
The co-evolution of the âsocialâ and the âtechnology": a netnographic study of Social movements in virtual worlds
Virtual worlds provide new forms of social interaction. They offer alternative spaces where social functions can be carried out in online three-dimensional virtual environments. One social phenomenon which has moved into the virtual world is the social movement, which are an important means of bringing out social, cultural and political changes through collective action. These social movements exist in an immersive technological ecosystem which is constantly evolving as designers release patches which change the way users âliveâ within these environments. Using a biography of artifacts approach, we explore not just the evolution of the technological artifact itself (the virtual world), but also its co-evolution with the social phenomena (a social movement). Using Netnography, a modified version of ethnography, and actornetwork theory, we explore a social movement in World of Warcraft, and observe how it evolves over time as changes to the virtual world are implemented
Courtship patterns in the information age. Theoretical reflections on the impact of computer technology on human grouping.
Online dating is a mass phenomenon. It is definitely not the only way of dating, since only a certain subpopulation uses this medium. However, it can be assumed that online dating will spread throughout the society with the increase in internet usage, which attracts the attention of researchers. Examples of research questions related to\ud
this issue include:\ud
*ĂÂHow should these systems be designed in order to enable the most effective partner search?\ud
ĂÂ*Which search strategies do users apply?\ud
ĂÂ*How can users be retained?\ud
ĂÂ*How can the marriage market be described?\ud
ĂÂ*Which patterns can be analysed from the logged behaviour in online dating agencies?\ud
ĂÂ*How can dating behaviour be analysed using statistical methods (Fiore 2004, Holme et.al. 2004)?\ud
*With these questions the existing research focusses on product selling strategies and the description of the phenomenon, while a theoretical framework needed to understand the phenomenon is lacking
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