Hyperlinks as Institutionalized Connective Public Goods for Collective Action Online

Nongovernmental organization (NGO) hyperlink networks are institutionalized connective public goods. They influence which actors and what aspects of social issues are made visible to the public in search engine results. To understand how contextual forces and institutional pressures influence who hyperlinks to whom online, this research examines a hyperlink network of 410 NGOs with various social missions operating across China. It suggests that institutional factors external to the network impact the structure of NGO hyperlink networks. In particular, institutional convener and legal registration status induce homophily hyperlinking effects among organizations, controlling for network interdependencies and other organizational attributes. Implications for hyperlink networks, institutional homophily, NGO collective action, and the development of civil society in China are drawn from the results.     

A study of homophily on social media

The fact that similarity breeds connections, the principle of homophily, has been well-studied in existing sociology literature. Several studies have observed this phenomenon by conducting surveys on human subjects. These studies have concluded that new ties are formed between similar individuals. This phenomenon has been used to explain several socio-psychological concepts such as, segregation, community development, social mobility, etc. However, due to the nature of these studies and limitations because of involvement of human subjects, conclusions from these studies are not easily extensible in online social media. Social media, which is becoming the infinite space for interactions, has exceeded all the expectations in terms of growth, for reasons beyond human mind. New ties are formed in social media in the same way that they emerge in real-world. However, given the differences between real world and online social media, do the same factors that govern the construction of new ties in real world also govern the construction of new ties in social media? In other words, does homophily exist in social media? In this article, we study this extremely significant question. We propose a systematic approach by studying three online social media sites, BlogCatalog, Last.fm, and LiveJournal and report our findings along with some interesting observations. The results indicate that the influence of interest-based homophily is not a very strong leading factor for constructing new ties specifically in the three social media sites with implications to strategic advertising, recommendations, and promoting applications at large.     

Exploring the relationship between perceptions of social capital and enacted support online

Online social networking sites enable users to connect with large, heterogeneous groups of people. While extant research suggests individuals benefit psychologically from the perception that they are well connected, little is known about the nature of tangible resources embedded in these online networks. In this study 49 participants sent 588 requests for instrumental help to their Facebook friends to determine the accessibility of networked resources and online social capital. Almost 80% of these modest requests went unanswered, and perceived bridging and bonding capital did not explain enacted support. However, people who occupied socially prestigious positions were the most likely to benefit from their friend's help. These results suggest that expansive mediated networks may yield limited instrumental benefits.     

The Diffusion of a Task Recommendation System to Facilitate Contributions to an Online Community

This paper studies the diffusion of SuggestBot, an intelligent task recommendation system that helps people find articles to edit in Wikipedia. We investigate factors that predict who adopts SuggestBot and its impact on adopters' future contributions to this online community. Analyzing records of participants' activities in Wikipedia, we found that both individual characteristics and social ties influence adoption. Specially, we found that highly involved contributors were more likely to adopt SuggestBot; interpersonal exposure to innovation, cohesion, and tie homophily all substantially increased the likelihood of adoption. However, connections to prominent, high‐status contributors did not influence adoption. Finally, although the SuggestBot innovation saw limited distribution, adopters made significantly more contributions to Wikipedia after adoption than nonadopter counterparts in the comparison group.     

弱连接对不同类型在线社交网络信息传播范围的影响研究

按照连接强度的不同,在线社交网络节点间的连接可以分为强连接和弱连接,可以通过网络上两个节点的邻居相对重叠来测量连接强度。实验表明,弱连接对于信息传播范围的影响与具体的网络类型有关系,在基于信息交换的在线社交网络中,例如移动电话通信网络、Wiki投票网络,移去弱连接并不会对信息收敛时传播的范围产生明显的影响;而在基于合作关系形成的在线社交网络中,例如Youtube、Facebook、CDBLP合作网,移去弱连接对信息传播的范围有明显的阻碍作用。     

Bounded Solidarity Confirmed? How Korean Immigrants' Mobile Communication Configures Their Social Networks

A hierarchical regression analysis of U.S.‐based Korean immigrants' mobile communication use (i.e., voice calling and texting) and their social network characteristics (i.e., network size, diversity, and centrality) revealed significant associations between texting with coethnic strong ties and network centrality within the ethnic community. Korean immigrants who texted frequently with both coethnic and host weak ties had larger networks. Network diversity was, however, associated only with voice calling with host ties (both strong and weak). These findings have implications for theories of bounded solidarity. Specifically, the results suggest that mobile communication is significantly associated with (a) denser social networks, and (b) an important and unique source of social capital embedded in immigrant communities.     

IMing, Text Messaging, and Adolescent Social Networks

Building on previous research in computer-mediated communication, social and communication networks, and adolescent development, this article raises three issues regarding adolescent use of socially interactive technologies (SITs) and their relationship to offline social networks: 1) whether adolescents are creating more, but weaker ties using SITs, 2) to what extent adolescent SIT-facilitated networks overlap with friendship networks, and 3) whether SIT relationships are important for adolescents who have fewer offline peer ties. In order to investigate these questions, network data collection and analysis were integrated with more traditional questionnaire methodology and statistical analysis. The results show that the adolescents in the study were not creating more ties using SITs, nor were they necessarily creating weaker SIT-based ties; that there was little overlap between SIT-facilitated and offline social networks; and that socially isolated adolescents were less likely than other adolescents to use SITs.     

社交网络取证初探

社交网络是人类借用计算技术和信息技术进行信息交流、建立人际交互关系等社会活动的一种新型工具,已成为社会计算中研究社会软件的核心课题之一。社交网页取证旨在对用户信息进行证据获取、固定、分析和展示,提供直接、有效、客观、公正的第三方依据。在互联网飞速发展的背景下,社交网页取证面临着用户信息多样、内容动态(实时)变化、海量、交互和图片内容是否可信的挑战,已成为社交网络和社会计算中舆情分析、情感计算、社交网络关系的内容分析以及个人、群体和社会性行为分析的一个重要难题。针对社交网页取证问题,以新浪微博为例,设计了一套取证解决方案,对用户发表的信息、人脸图片、位置信息进行固定,依靠网页取证方法来认证信息的可信性。同时,利用信息可视化展示手段和辅助分析来应对在海量社交网页数据背景下的计算机取证工作。     

Building trust networks in the absence of trust relations

User-specified trust relations are often very sparse and dynamic, making them difficult to accurately predict from online social media. In addition, trust relations are usually unavailable for most social media platforms. These issues pose a great challenge for predicting trust relations and further building trust networks. In this study, we investigate whether we can predict trust relations via a sparse learning model, and propose to build a trust network without trust relations using only pervasively available interaction data and homophily effect in an online world. In particular, we analyze the reliability of predicting trust relations by interaction behaviors, and provide a principled way to mathematically incorporate interaction behaviors and homophily effect in a novel framework, bTrust. Results of experiments on real-world datasets from Epinions and Ciao demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed framework. Further experiments were conducted to understand the importance of interaction behaviorsand homophily effect in building trust networks.     

The role of multidimensional social capital in crowdfunding: A comparative study in China and US

How does an entrepreneur's social network impact crowdfunding? Based on social capital theory, we developed a research model and conducted a comparative study using objective data collected from China and the U.S. We found that an entrepreneur's social network ties, obligations to fund other entrepreneurs, and the shared meaning of the crowdfunding project between the entrepreneur and the sponsors had significant effects on crowdfunding performance in both China and the U.S. The predictive power of the three dimensions of social capital was stronger in China than it was in the U.S. Obligation also had a greater impact in China.     

Investigating recognition-based performance in an open content community: A social capital perspective

As the open source movement grows, it becomes important to understand the dynamics that affect the motivation of participants who contribute their time freely to such projects. One important motivation that has been identified is the desire for formal recognition in the open source community. We investigated the impact of social capital in participants’ social networks on their recognition-based performance; i.e., the formal status they are accorded in the community. We used a sample of 465 active participants in the Wikipedia open content encyclopedia community to investigate the effects of two types of social capital and found that network closure, measured by direct and indirect ties, had a significant positive effect on increasing participants’ recognition-based performance. Structural holes had mixed effects on participants’ status, but were generally a source of social capital.     

Actively learning to infer social ties

We study the extent to which social ties between people can be inferred in large social network, in particular via active user interactions. In most online social networks, relationships are lack of meaning labels (e.g., ??colleague?? and ??intimate friends??) due to various reasons. Understanding the formation of different types of social relationships can provide us insights into the micro-level dynamics of the social network. In this work, we precisely define the problem of inferring social ties and propose a Partially-Labeled Pairwise Factor Graph Model (PLP-FGM) for learning to infer the type of social relationships. The model formalizes the problem of inferring social ties into a flexible semi-supervised framework. We test the model on three different genres of data sets and demonstrate its effectiveness. We further study how to leverage user interactions to help improve the inferring accuracy. Two active learning algorithms are proposed to actively select relationships to query users for their labels. Experimental results show that with only a few user corrections, the accuracy of inferring social ties can be significantly improved. Finally, to scale the model to handle real large networks, a distributed learning algorithm has been developed.     

Civic engagement among educated Chinese youth: The role of SNS (Social Networking Services), bonding and bridging social capital

This study conducted a stratified and cluster sampling on Chinese college students (N = 654) to investigate how SNS usages and social capital elicit impact on civic engagement. The results of path regression model shows that using SNS to meet new people is positively correlated with bonding and bridging social capital in the virtual world, using SNS to contact existing friends contributes to both bonding and bridging social capital in the real world. Online bonding and bridging social capital are positively related to online civic involvement, but not significantly related to offline civic behaviors. Offline bonding and bridging social capital are positively associated with offline civic participation, but not significantly related to online civic participation. The direct effect of using SNS to meet new social ties on civic engagement is partially mediated by social capital, whilst the effect of using SNS to connect friends on civic participation is completely mediated by social capital.     

Do Internet Users Have More Social Ties? A Call for Differentiated Analyses of Internet Use

Research on the impact of Internet use on social ties has generated conflicting results. Based on data from the 2000 General Social Survey, this study finds that different types of Internet usage are differentially related to social connectivity. While nonsocial users of the Internet do not differ significantly from nonusers in network size, social users of the Internet have more social ties than nonusers do. Among social users, heavy email users have more social ties than do light email users. There is indication that, while email users communicate online with people whom they also contact offline, chat users maintain some of their social ties exclusively online. These findings call for differentiated analyses of Internet uses and their effects on interpersonal connectivity.     

Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non‐Users of Social Network Sites

Are there systematic differences between people who use social network sites and those who stay away, despite a familiarity with them? Based on data from a survey administered to a diverse group of young adults, this article looks at the predictors of SNS usage, with particular focus on Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, and Friendster. Findings suggest that use of such sites is not randomly distributed across a group of highly wired users. A person’s gender, race and ethnicity, and parental educational background are all associated with use, but in most cases only when the aggregate concept of social network sites is disaggregated by service. Additionally, people with more experience and autonomy of use are more likely to be users of such sites. Unequal participation based on user background suggests that differential adoption of such services may be contributing to digital inequality.     

计算机网络安全性问题探析

随着国内外计算机和通信技术及应用的快速发展,传统电信网正在向信息网迅速发展。以网络方式获得信息和交流信息、已经成为现代信息社会的一个重要特征。网络正在逐步改变人们的工作方式和生活方式,成为当今社会发展的一个主题。本文从计算机网络安全的相关知识概述出发,分析了影响网络安全的原因,并提出了维护计算机网络安全的对策。     

Stochastic actor-oriented modeling for studying homophily and social influence in OSS projects

Open Source Software projects are communities in which people “learn the ropes” from each other. The social and technical activities of developers evolve together, and as they link to each other they get organized in a network of changing socio-technical connections. Traces of those activities, or behaviors, are typically visible to all, in project repositories and through communication between them. Thus, in principle it may be possible to study those traces to tell which of the observable socio-technical behaviors of developers in these projects are responsible for the forming of persistent links between them. It may also be possible to tell the extent to which links participate in the spread of potential behavioral influences. Since OSS projects change in both social and technical activity over time, static approaches, that either ignore time or simplify it to a few slices, are frequently inadequate to study these networks. On the other hand, ad-hoc dynamic approaches are often only loosely supported by theory and can yield misleading findings. Here we adapt the stochastic actor-oriented models from social network analysis. These models enable the study of the interplay between behavior, influence and network architecture, for dynamic networks, in a statistically sound way. We apply the stochastic actor-oriented models in case studies of two Apache Software Foundation projects, and study code ownership and developer productivity as behaviors. For those, we find evidence of significant social selection effects (homophily) in both projects, but in different directions. However, we find no evidence for the spread (social influence) of either code ownership or developer productivity behaviors through the networks.     

基于社会学理论的信任关系预测模型

随着社会网络的盛行,信任作为用户之间交互的基础,在信息共享、经验交流和社会舆论方面发挥着重要作用。然而,信任是一个复杂而抽象的概念,受多种因素影响,很难识别信任形成的诱因以及其形成机制。由于来自社会科学的社会学理论有助于解释社会现象,而社会网络反映了现实世界中用户之间的联系,因此,从社会学角度出发,通过研究社会等级理论和同质性理论获取信任关系的发展规律,进而构建信任关系预测模型。首先,对社会等级理论和同质性理论进行阐述,并验证了社会等级理论和同质性理论在社会网络中的存在;然后,分别针对社会等级理论和同质性理论对信任关系的影响提出社会等级正则化方法和同质性正则化方法;最后,利用非负矩阵的三维分解方法并结合社会等级理论和同质性理论实现对信任关系预测的建模,并提出 SocialTrust 模型用于信任关系预测。实验结果表明,相比于其他方法,该方法在信任关系预测方面具有较高的精度。     

The role of attachment style in building social capital from a social networking site: The interplay of anxiety and avoidance

Drawing on attachment theory, the present study examines the attachment styles of individuals relative to two ways of building social capital – bonding social capital and bridging social capital. In trying to relate attachment theory to the use of SNS, the present study argues that bonding social capital is reflected in the use of SNS for forming attachment bonds from trust-based strong ties, while bridging social capital is reflected in the use of SNS for causal affiliations among more socially distant people. The conceptual model was validated through an online survey completed by 368 Facebook users. Two hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated several results. First, avoidance attachment was significant and negatively predictive of both bonding social and bridging social capital. Second, both bonding social capital and bridging social capital reported by respondents appeared to be greatest under conditions of low anxiety attachment coupled with low avoidance attachment. Third, levels of Facebook usage were significant and independently predictive of bridging social capital.