A virtual diary companion

Chatbots and embodied conversational agents show turn based conversation behaviour. In current research we almost always assume that each utterance of a human conversational partner should be followed by an intelligent and/or empathetic reaction of chatbot or embodied agent. They are assumed to be alert, trying to please the user. There are other applications which have not yet received much attention and which require a more patient or relaxed attitude, waiting for the right moment to provide feedback to the human partner. Being able and willing to listen is one of the conditions for being successful. In this paper we have some observations on listening behaviour research and introduce one of our applications, the virtual diary companion

An Agent-Based Approach to Modeling Online Social Influence

Abstract—The aim of this study is to better understand social influence in online social media. Therefore, we propose a method in which we implement, validate and improve an individual behavior model. The behavior model is based on three fundamental behavioral principles of social influence from the literature: 1) liking, 2) social proof and 3) consistency. We have implemented the model using an agent-based modeling approach. The multi-agent model contains the social network structure, individual behavior parameters and the scenario that are obtained from empirical data. The model is validated by comparing the output of the multi-agent simulation with empirical data. We demonstrate the method by evaluating five versions of behavior models applied to the use case of Twitter behavior about a talent show on Dutch television