23,532 research outputs found
Signed Networks in Social Media
Relations between users on social media sites often reflect a mixture of
positive (friendly) and negative (antagonistic) interactions. In contrast to
the bulk of research on social networks that has focused almost exclusively on
positive interpretations of links between people, we study how the interplay
between positive and negative relationships affects the structure of on-line
social networks. We connect our analyses to theories of signed networks from
social psychology. We find that the classical theory of structural balance
tends to capture certain common patterns of interaction, but that it is also at
odds with some of the fundamental phenomena we observe --- particularly related
to the evolving, directed nature of these on-line networks. We then develop an
alternate theory of status that better explains the observed edge signs and
provides insights into the underlying social mechanisms. Our work provides one
of the first large-scale evaluations of theories of signed networks using
on-line datasets, as well as providing a perspective for reasoning about social
media sites
A Model of Consistent Node Types in Signed Directed Social Networks
Signed directed social networks, in which the relationships between users can
be either positive (indicating relations such as trust) or negative (indicating
relations such as distrust), are increasingly common. Thus the interplay
between positive and negative relationships in such networks has become an
important research topic. Most recent investigations focus upon edge sign
inference using structural balance theory or social status theory. Neither of
these two theories, however, can explain an observed edge sign well when the
two nodes connected by this edge do not share a common neighbor (e.g., common
friend). In this paper we develop a novel approach to handle this situation by
applying a new model for node types. Initially, we analyze the local node
structure in a fully observed signed directed network, inferring underlying
node types. The sign of an edge between two nodes must be consistent with their
types; this explains edge signs well even when there are no common neighbors.
We show, moreover, that our approach can be extended to incorporate directed
triads, when they exist, just as in models based upon structural balance or
social status theory. We compute Bayesian node types within empirical studies
based upon partially observed Wikipedia, Slashdot, and Epinions networks in
which the largest network (Epinions) has 119K nodes and 841K edges. Our
approach yields better performance than state-of-the-art approaches for these
three signed directed networks.Comment: To appear in the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in
Social Network Analysis and Mining (ASONAM), 201
Distilling Information Reliability and Source Trustworthiness from Digital Traces
Online knowledge repositories typically rely on their users or dedicated
editors to evaluate the reliability of their content. These evaluations can be
viewed as noisy measurements of both information reliability and information
source trustworthiness. Can we leverage these noisy evaluations, often biased,
to distill a robust, unbiased and interpretable measure of both notions?
In this paper, we argue that the temporal traces left by these noisy
evaluations give cues on the reliability of the information and the
trustworthiness of the sources. Then, we propose a temporal point process
modeling framework that links these temporal traces to robust, unbiased and
interpretable notions of information reliability and source trustworthiness.
Furthermore, we develop an efficient convex optimization procedure to learn the
parameters of the model from historical traces. Experiments on real-world data
gathered from Wikipedia and Stack Overflow show that our modeling framework
accurately predicts evaluation events, provides an interpretable measure of
information reliability and source trustworthiness, and yields interesting
insights about real-world events.Comment: Accepted at 26th World Wide Web conference (WWW-17
Minds Online: The Interface between Web Science, Cognitive Science, and the Philosophy of Mind
Alongside existing research into the social, political and economic impacts of the Web, there is a need to study the Web from a cognitive and epistemic perspective. This is particularly so as new and emerging technologies alter the nature of our interactive engagements with the Web, transforming the extent to which our thoughts and actions are shaped by the online environment. Situated and ecological approaches to cognition are relevant to understanding the cognitive significance of the Web because of the emphasis they place on forces and factors that reside at the level of agent–world interactions. In particular, by adopting a situated or ecological approach to cognition, we are able to assess the significance of the Web from the perspective of research into embodied, extended, embedded, social and collective cognition. The results of this analysis help to reshape the interdisciplinary configuration of Web Science, expanding its theoretical and empirical remit to include the disciplines of both cognitive science and the philosophy of mind
Trust and privacy in distributed work groups
Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Social Computing, Behavioral Modeling and PredictionTrust plays an important role in both group cooperation and economic exchange. As new technologies emerge for communication and exchange, established mechanisms of trust are disrupted or distorted, which can lead to the breakdown of cooperation or to increasing fraud in exchange. This paper examines whether and how personal privacy information about members of distributed work groups influences individuals' cooperation and privacy behavior in the group. Specifically, we examine whether people use others' privacy settings as signals of trustworthiness that affect group cooperation. In addition, we examine how individual privacy preferences relate to trustworthy behavior. Understanding how people interact with others in online settings, in particular when they have limited information, has important implications for geographically distributed groups enabled through new information technologies. In addition, understanding how people might use information gleaned from technology usage, such as personal privacy settings, particularly in the absence of other information, has implications for understanding many potential situations that arise in pervasively networked environments.Preprin
Information Access in a Multilingual World: Transitioning from Research to Real-World Applications
Multilingual Information Access (MLIA) is at a turning point wherein substantial real-world applications are being introduced after fifteen years of research into cross-language information retrieval, question answering, statistical machine translation and named entity recognition. Previous workshops on this topic have focused on research and small- scale applications. The focus of this workshop was on technology transfer from research to applications and on what future research needs to be done which facilitates MLIA in an increasingly connected multilingual world
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Trust in the digital world - the return of the kings of old
Drawing principally on examples and literature from the Anglosphere, the author argues that the high salience given to "trust" and "trustworthiness" in recent scholarly literature, and which (notably in Putnam's work) attributes declining trust to a widely mistrusted mass media does not acknowledge the trustbuilding potential (realised in some instances) of interactive "Web 2.0" applications. Drawing on O'Neill's proposal that trust inheres in dialogue and mutual checking and verification, the author argues that "Web 2.0" media provide a variety of instances where the "dialogic" character of "Web 2.0" has established and enhanced trustworthiness. He argues normatively for a combination of "Web 2.0" interactivity and the adoption and implementation of self-regulatory codes in order to enhance the trustworthiness of the media
Credibility of Health Information and Digital Media: New Perspectives and Implications for Youth
Part of the Volume on Digital Media, Youth, and Credibility. This chapter considers the role of Web technologies on the availability and consumption of health information. It argues that young people are largely unfamiliar with trusted health sources online, making credibility particularly germane when considering this type of information. The author suggests that networked digital media allow for humans and technologies act as "apomediaries" that can be used to steer consumers to high quality health information, thereby empowering health information seekers of all ages
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