Controlling Information Flow in Social Networks

Soumajit Pramanik

Vendredi 03 octobre 2014 à 11h, salle 26-00/101 (Noguez)

Slides

Social information flow is basically the spread of any information among socially connected (friends, family, colleagues etc.) people. In real life, this type of information flow is very hard to capture but in case of digital world this phenomenon can be investigated with the help of Online Social Networks (OSNs) like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare etc. In OSNs, whenever a user shares any information, her direct neighbors (friends/followers) can automatically get exposed to that and may decide to propagate it or not. This type of information propagation can be logged and used as a proxy of real-world social information diffusion. In case of information propagation in OSNs, there is a specific role of mediators/information-brokers who help to spread the information beyond the immediate reach of social neighbors. For instance, in Twitter, « Mention » is such a mediator utility. « Mention » is enabled in a tweet by adding « @username ». All the users mentioned in a tweet will receive a mention notification and are able to retrieve the tweet from their personal « Mention » tabs. So, by using « Mention », one can draw attention from a specific user (may not belong to his set of followers), or highlight a place or organization anytime. So, the main research question we are trying to address is- « how this mediators (e.g. « Mention ») facilitates any information flow in an OSN (e.g. Twitter). »