Evaluating Posts on the Steemit Blockchain: Analysis on Topics Based on Textual Cues

Online Social Networking platforms (OSNs) are part of the people's everyday life answering the deep-rooted need for communication among humans. During recent years, a new generation of social media based on blockchain became very popular, bringing the power of the technology to the service of social networks. Steemit is one such and employs the blockchain to implement a rewarding mechanism, adding a new, economic, layer to the social media service. The reward mechanism grants virtual tokens to the users capable of engaging other users on the platform, which can be either vested in the platform for increased influence or exchanged for fiat currency. The introduction of an economic layer on a social networking platform can seriously influence how people socialize. In this work, we tackle the problem of understanding how this new business model conditions the way people create contents. We performed term frequency and topic modelling analyses over the written contents published on the platforms between 2017 and 2019. This analysis lets us understand the most common topics of the contents that appear in the platform. While personal mundane information still appears, along with contents related to arts, food, travels, and sport, we also see emerging a very strong presence of contents about blockchain, cryptocurrency and, more specifically, on Steemit itself and its users

Public attitudes towards privacy in COVID-19 times in the Republic of Ireland: a pilot study

This research focuses on designing methods aimed at assessing Irish public attitudes regarding privacy in COVID-19 times and their influence on the adoption of COVID-19 spread control technology such as the COVID tracker app. The success of such technologies is dependent on their adoption rate and privacy concerns may be a factor delaying or preventing thus adoption. An online questionnaire was built to collect: demographic data, participant's general privacy profile using the Privacy Segmentation Index (PSI) which classifies individuals into 3 groups (privacy fundamentalists, pragmatists, and unconcerned), and the attitudes toward privacy in COVID-19 times. The questionnaire was shared via websites and social networks. The data was collected between 27/08/2020 to 27/9/2020. We received and analysed 258 responses. The initial pilot study found that almost 73% of the respondents were pragmatists or unconcerned about privacy when it came to sharing their private data. Comparable results were obtained with other privacy studies that have employed PSI. The pilot indicates a huge increase, from 12% pre-pandemic to 61% during the pandemic, of people willing to share their data. The questionnaire developed following this study is further used in a national survey on privacy in COVID-19 times

Formation of a Global Intercultural Discourse of a Multicultural Person

The article discusses the problem of identifying a global intercultural discourse of communication participants, characterizes its parameters, and reviews strategies for its actualization. The purpose of the article is to build and justify a model of this discourse. The methods used in work include discourse analysis, modeling method (contrastive and comparative) analysis, transactional analysis, textual information analysis method, critical analysis, etc. Scientific results of the research: parameters of the global intercultural discourse are refined, its intercultural model is built, and discourses of the participants of intercultural communication are analyzed. The theoretical significance of the research lies in the development of a sample of global intercultural discourse that input in the theory of global discourse. The practical value of the work is that research results can be used both in the practice of intercultural communication and in the process of preparing monographs, textbooks, and training in the field of intercultural communication

Formation of a Global Intercultural Discourse of a Multicultural Person

The article discusses the problem of identifying a global intercultural discourse of communication participants, characterizes its parameters, and reviews strategies for its actualization. The purpose of the article is to build and justify a model of this discourse. The methods used in work include discourse analysis, modeling method (contrastive and comparative) analysis, transactional analysis, textual information analysis method, critical analysis, etc. Scientific results of the research: parameters of the global intercultural discourse are refined, its intercultural model is built, and discourses of the participants of intercultural communication are analyzed. The theoretical significance of the research lies in the development of a sample of global intercultural discourse that input in the theory of global discourse. The practical value of the work is that research results can be used both in the practice of intercultural communication and in the process of preparing monographs, textbooks, and training in the field of intercultural communication

A multilayer social overlay for new generation DOSNs

Online Social Networking platforms (OSNs) have become part of the real life of people. This is the natural outcome of many centuries of "social media" development answering the deep-rooted need for communication among humans. Existing social media platforms give users the impression that they are in full control of their data. However, it is actually those companies providing those services that have sole authority over a person's information. The need of trusted environment and the privacy issues in OSNs have seen the rise of Decentralized Online Social Networks. However, all of these platforms are far from being useful in real life. Indeed, they fail to address the complexity of social structures, in which we change our roles fluently from one to another leading to different roles in several independent and interconnected contexts. The envision of a Next Generation Internet focused on people is the main topic of the new generation of Decentralized Online Social Networks, which takes into account the main characteristics of the previous generations. In this paper, we present a new idea to model a multilayer P2P Social Overlay which takes into account different actors and relationships to be included in smart environments. Moreover, it is organized in layers, where one layer represents a specific social context of the peer it models. We present a formal definition of the Heterogeneous Ego Network and we show how it works in a general scenario

The Contextual Ego Network P2P Overlay for the Next Generation Social Networks

Internet has completely evolved in recent years, and smart devices, such as mobile and IoT devices have become pervasive in the daily life of people. Internet is becoming more social, and Online Social Networking platforms (OSNs) have become part of the real life of people. Current Online Social Media platforms are centralized. Centralization presents several drawbacks, and during the last years several privacy issues have been arisen concerning the control of private data. Indeed, those platforms offer inadequate guarantees where it concerns the privacy of their users. These problems have been confronted by exploiting decentralized solutions. Decentralized Online Social Networks (DOSNs) guarantee more control over private data. Thanks to the definition of a Next Generation Internet focused on people, the need for a new generation of Decentralized Online Social Networks, which puts the user at the center of the system, has been arisen. The HELIOS project tackles this issue by introducing a new decentralized paradigm. In this paper, we present the Contextual Ego Network (CEN), a new P2P Social Overlay built by exploiting the real life of users. We propose a formal definition of the structure, the implementation of the structure in a Java library, and a preliminary analysis in order to evaluate the homophily of each context

InterCriteria Analysis of Ant Algorithm with Environment Change for GPS Surveying Problem

International audienceIn this paper we apply InterCriteria Analysis (ICrA), which is based on the apparatus of Index Matrices and Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets. We apply ICrA on the well-known Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) general framework including environment change. The environment is simulated by means of the Logistic map, that is used in ACO for perturbing the update of the pheromone trails. We compare different levels of perturbation of the one of the most important parameters in ACO – the pheromone. Based on ICrA we examine the obtained identification results and discuss the conclusions about existing relations and dependencies between defined criteria, defined in terms of ICrA

Influence of space weather on the 24th solar activity growth phase on human cardiovascular system in Almaty conditions

In this work the dependence of frequency of cardiac infarction, hypertonic crisis, cerebrovascular accident and stroke in Almaty on solar and magnetic activity at the period 2009-2013 was investigated. For this chosen period the retrospective data on calls for emergency help was analyzed. In order to appreciate the level of solar and geomagnetic activity the Wolf number, Ар-and k-indexes was used. Data was analyzed by statistical method of epochs in order to find the correlations between geomagnetic activity and occurrence of listed above diseases. It was find that cardiovascular system condition of Almaty population depend on geophysical situation