The International Affiliation Network of YouTube Trends

Online video, a ubiquitous, visual, and highly shareable medium, is well-suited to crossing geographic, cultural, and linguistic barriers. Trending videos in particular, by virtue of reaching a large number of viewers in a short span of time, are powerful as both influencers and indicators of international communication flows. In this work, we study a large set of videos trending across 57 nations, collected from YouTube over a 7-month period. We consider the set as a network of content flowing between nations, then develop conditional co-affiliation, a nation-nation co-affiliation index that enables a meaningful interpretation of network path length and the application of betweenness centrality. We observe a highly-interlinked network with remarkably similar co-affiliation levels between very different nations. However, Arabic-speaking nations appear more isolated, with the U.A.E. emerging as a key bridge. By analyzing video trend lifespans, we show that nations having many globally-popular video trends are reliably not the nation where those trends are strongest: we see no evidence to support the widely discussed idea of cultural exporter or trendsetter nations. We model correlations between co-affiliation and a selection of contextual factors. We note a surprisingly complex interaction between migration and shared video trends. Consistent with existing work on video popularity, we find that long trending times within one nation do not necessarily translate to reaching a wide global audience. This work expands on previous studies of the geographic popularity of videos by incorporating trending data and extending our analysis from video-nation affiliations to nation-nation co-affiliations. Characterizing these relationships is key to understanding the international cultural impact and potential of online video

Finding Street Gang Members on Twitter

Most street gang members use Twitter to intimidate others, to present outrageous images and statements to the world, and to share recent illegal activities. Their tweets may thus be useful to law enforcement agencies to discover clues about recent crimes or to anticipate ones that may occur. Finding these posts, however, requires a method to discover gang member Twitter profiles. This is a challenging task since gang members represent a very small population of the 320 million Twitter users. This paper studies the problem of automatically finding gang members on Twitter. It outlines a process to curate one of the largest sets of verifiable gang member profiles that have ever been studied. A review of these profiles establishes differences in the language, images, YouTube links, and emojis gang members use compared to the rest of the Twitter population. Features from this review are used to train a series of supervised classifiers. Our classifier achieves a promising F1 score with a low false positive rate.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables, Published as a full paper at 2016 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM 2016

Government and Social Media: A Case Study of 31 Informational World Cities

Social media platforms are increasingly being used by governments to foster user interaction. Particularly in cities with enhanced ICT infrastructures (i.e., Informational World Cities) and high internet penetration rates, social media platforms are valuable tools for reaching high numbers of citizens. This empirical investigation of 31 Informational World Cities will provide an overview of social media services used for governmental purposes, of their popularity among governments, and of their usage intensity in broadcasting information online.Comment: In Proceedings of the 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 1715-1724). IEEE Computer Society, 201

MEPs online: Understanding communication strategies for remote representatives

This article explores the use of the Internet by Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), assessing the adoption of online communication as well as its strategic uses. In particular we analysed the websites, weblogs and social networking site profiles of all MEPs who linked to an online presence from the European parliament homepage, a total of 440 MEPs representing all 27 member nations. Through a thorough analysis of the content using a scheme designed to record the presence and functionality of 103 specific features and tools and recency of updates, we assess how MEPs use the Internet to connect with a range of audiences; from journalists to loyal supporters. We find MEPs embracing a range of features which would be appealing to a wide range of different visitors. There is a minor generational divide among MEPs based both on their age and the length of time their country has been a member of the European Union. However overall we suggest there is an ebb and flow of innovation within the online political communication of these parliamentarians

"Colearning" - Collaborative Open Learning through OER and Social Media

This chapter introduces the concept of coLearning as well as discussing how open learning networks can produce, share and reuse OER collaboratively through social media. COLEARNING OBJECTIVES The aim of this investigation is to identify new forms of collaboration, as well as strategies that can be used to make the production and adaptation processes of OER more explicit for anyone in a social network to contribute. REUSABILITY This open content is an adapted version of a conference paper for OCW conference 2012, which was created by the same authors. This chapter can be reused by: Educators who would like to create reusable OER (images, videos, maps, units) Learners who are interested in tools for reusing and adapting OER Content developers who are looking for different media to enrich OER Social network users who would like to produce and share open media conten

A typology of fashion consumers based on motivations to interact with brands in social media : the ZARA case

This thesis main aim is focused on better understand the motivations to interact with brands in social media, applied to Zara. More specifically, the objective is to recognize and explore the fashion consumer profiles, taking into account psychographic (personality) and sociodemographic characteristics. The objective is to provide insights about “who” are the fashion consumers based on their motivations to interact with Zara in social media. In order to assess fashion consumers’ profiles the motivation scale developed by Enginkaya and Yilmaz (2014) and the personality scale developed by Baird et al., (2006) were adapted and used on this study. The study is exploratory and quantitative. An online and self-administered questionnaire was developed and data collection was applied among individuals who are simultaneously Zara clients and followers on the brand social media pages. Cluster analysis was used in order to segment Zara consumers using the 250 valid answers collected in the online questionnaire. Regarding the results, two segments of consumers were identified (Opportunity Motivated and Entertainment & Investigation Motivated). Both segments have identical sociodemographic profiles, however the segments differ on consumers’ personality traits and frequency of shopping at Zara. The Opportunity Motivated segment is consisted mostly by agreeable and open consumers and agreeable and conscious consumers comprise the Entertainment & Investigation Motivated segment. The theoretical framework proposed might help to support organizations to better understand the fashion consumer’s motivations to interact with fashion brands on social networks. It also helps managers and marketers to develop better market strategies for these segments.O principal objectivo desta tese é perceber as motivações para interagir com as marcas nas redes sociais, aplicado à Zara. Concretamente, o objectivo é identificar e explorar os perfis dos consumidores de moda, baseado nas motivações, tendo em conta as características psicográficas (personalidade) e sociodemográficas. O intuito é fornecer conhecimento sobre quem são os consumidores, baseado nas motivações para interagirem com a Zara nas redes sociais. O estudo é exploratório e quantitativo. Um questionário online e auto-administrado foi desenvolvido e os dados recolhidos, selecionando apenas clientes Zara e seguidores da marca nas redes sociais. A análise de clusters foi utilizada para segmentar os consumidores utilizando as 250 respostas do questionário. Para perceber os perfis dos consumidores de moda, foram adaptadas e utilizadas neste estudo as escalas das motivações desenvolvida por Enginkaya e Yilmaz (2014) e a de personalidade desenvolvida por Baird et al., (2006). Em relação aos resultados, foram identificados dois segmentos (Motivados pelas Oportunidades e Motivados pelo Entertenimento & Investigação). Ambos têm características sociodemográficas semelhantes, mas diferem nos traços de personalidade e na frequência que fazem compras na Zara. O segmento dos consumidores motivados pelas oportunidades é consistido por consumidores condescendentes e abertos, enquanto do segundo segmento fazem parte consumidores condescendentes e conscientes. Este estudo poderá ajudar as organizações a perceberem melhor as motivações dos consumidores para interagirem com as marcas nas redes sociais, sobretudo na área da moda. Poderá também ajudar gestores e marketers a atingirem melhor os consumidores ao desenvolverem estratégias mais adequadas para estes segmentos