Developmental Neural Correlates of Social Interaction

Children develop in a sea of reciprocal social interaction, but their brain development is predominately studied in non-interactive contexts (e.g., viewing photographs of faces). This dissertation investigated how the developing brain supports social interaction. Specifically, novel paradigms were used to target two facets of social experience—social communication and social motivation—across three studies in children and adults. In Study 1, adults listened to short vignettes—which contained no social information—that they believed to be either prerecorded or presented over an audio-feed by a live social partner. Simply believing that speech was from a live social partner increased activation in the brain’s mentalizing network—a network involved in thinking about others’ thoughts. Study 2 extended this paradigm to middle childhood, a time of increasing social competence and social network complexity, as well as structural and functional social brain development. Results showed that, as in adults, regions of the mentalizing network were engaged by live speech. Taken together, these findings indicate that the mentalizing network may support the processing of interactive communicative cues across development. Given this established importance of social-interactive context, Study 3 examined children’s social motivation when they believed they were engaged in a computer-based chat with a peer. Children initiated interaction via sharing information about their likes and hobbies and received responses from the peer. Compared to a non-social control, in which children chatted with a computer, peer interaction increased activation in mentalizing regions and reward circuitry. Further, within mentalizing regions, responsivity to the peer increased with age. Thus, across all three studies, social cognitive regions associated with mentalizing supported real-time social interaction. In contrast, the specific social context appeared to influence both reward circuitry involvement and age-related changes in neural activity. Future studies should continue to examine how the brain supports interaction across varied real-world social contexts. In addition to illuminating typical development, understanding the neural bases of interaction will offer insight into social disabilities such as autism, where social difficulties are often most acute in interactive situations. Ultimately, to best capture human experience, social neuroscience ought to be embedded in the social world.

Influences and benefits of role models on social media.

The current paper examined three research questions. First, what are the perceived benefits for social network users who have role models online? Second, to what extent does having role models online influence one’s self-presentation on social media? And finally, are users who expect more in return (greater reciprocity) more likely to have role models on social media? Using two opportunity survey samples and exploratory analyses, study 1 (N = 236) demon-strated that having role models was associated with greater perceived support for one’s career aspirations, and perceived access to information. The results of study 2 (N = 192) revealed that participants who had role models online reported that their online profile presented a more realistic self-presentation of values and pri-orities, as well as having higher reciprocity expectation.

ENGINEERING DIGITAL SHARING PLATFORM TO CREATE SOCIAL CONTAGION: EVIDENCE FROM LARGE SCALE RANDOMIZED FIELD EXPERIMENTS

Peer-to-peer information sharing has fundamentally changed customer decision-making process. Recent developments in information technologies have enabled digital sharing platforms to influence various granular aspects of the information sharing process. Despite the growing importance of digital information sharing, little research has examined the optimal design choices for a platform seeking to maximize returns from information sharing. My dissertation seeks to fill this gap. Specifically, I study novel interventions that can be implemented by the platform at different stages of the information sharing. In collaboration with a leading for-profit platform and a non-profit platform, I conduct three large-scale field experiments to causally identify the impact of these interventions on customers’ sharing behaviors as well as the sharing outcomes. The first essay examines whether and how a firm can enhance social contagion by simply varying the message shared by customers with their friends. Using a large randomized field experiment, I find that i) adding only information about the sender’s purchase status increases the likelihood of recipients’ purchase; ii) adding only information about referral reward increases recipients’ follow-up referrals; and iii) adding information about both the sender’s purchase as well as the referral rewards increases neither the likelihood of purchase nor follow-up referrals. I then discuss the underlying mechanisms. The second essay studies whether and how a firm can design unconditional incentive to engage customers who already reveal willingness to share. I conduct a field experiment to examine the impact of incentive design on sender’s purchase as well as further referral behavior. I find evidence that incentive structure has a significant, but interestingly opposing, impact on both outcomes. The results also provide insights about senders’ motives in sharing. The third essay examines whether and how a non-profit platform can use mobile messaging to leverage recipients’ social ties to encourage blood donation. I design a large field experiment to causally identify the impact of different types of information and incentives on donor’s self-donation and group donation behavior. My results show that non-profits can stimulate group effect and increase blood donation, but only with group reward. Such group reward works by motivating a different donor population. In summary, the findings from the three studies will offer valuable insights for platforms and social enterprises on how to engineer digital platforms to create social contagion. The rich data from randomized experiments and complementary sources (archive and survey) also allows me to test the underlying mechanism at work. In this way, my dissertation provides both managerial implication and theoretical contribution to the phenomenon of peer-to-peer information sharing.

O processo de organização social do Grupo Herança Viva de Chapecó-SC e suas estratégias de ação conjunta

The consequences resulting from economic modernization model generated social and environmental imbalances, resulting in the exclusion and social isolation, perceived consequences in the agricultural sector. When studying social organizations, tends to see how they keep their forward cooperation processes all a company incorporated by the appreciation of individualism and competition. The overall objective for this research was to analyze the organizational dynamics of Agroecology Group Heritage Viva Chapecó, Santa Catarina, in order to identify the strengths and threats and collaborate in this way for preparation of action strategies for sustainability. The selected group is based on the principles of agroecology for the conduct of their agricultural production systems, avoiding the use of agrochemicals, proven through the use of participatory certification seal Ecovida Network, and the products sold mainly in street fairs in the city of chapecó. To fulfill such a proposal were consulted the minutes of meetings and questionnaires with farmers to assess the dynamics of cooperation among its members, through the understanding of their social capital and social network analysis (SNA). To extend the study of the group and its members was adopted methodological approach of action research where activities were developed to identify strengths and weaknesses and contribute to its organizational restructuring, resulting in the construction, carried out by farmers, the guiding principles of the Living Heritage Group will contribute to the decision-making and strengthen their identity. The survey also brought the group is inserted in the Social Transition Agroecology therefore change the current paradigm is not inserted only in the alternative model of production, but in the form of organization of social actors and their role in the marketing process of their products, in discussing the scenario of food supply chains.

Las posibilidades de internet en la reconfiguración de la red social primaria del adulto mayor, fracturada por efecto de la migración* El caso de los adultos mayores con parientes migrantes en 6 municipios del departamento del Quindío

El presente artículo muestra cómo Internet se convierte en una herramienta de comunicación importante para reconfigurar la red social primaria del adulto mayor, fracturada por efecto de la migración. En la investigación que le da origien, se pudo constatar que hoy esta red se encuentra dividida en red primaria natural, conformada por los parientes y amigos con los que comparte el día a día, y red primaria virtual, integrada por los parientes migrantes. El escrito centra su interés en presentar las características de la red primaria virtual en la que el adulto mayor se vio impelido a participar para satisfacer sus necesidades comunicacionales. Esta red cumple la función de mantener, pero no de extender, su red social primaria. Los resultados dan cuenta de 4 aspectos: las competencias digitales desarrolladas por el adulto mayor, la estructura, las funciones y los atributos de vínculo de la red primaria virtual. Para ello se acudió a autores como Cabrera, Castell; Madarriaga, Abello & Sierra; Narváez A.; Soto, Navarro & Sánchez; Tovar & Villarraga. La investigación fue de tipo etnográfico, con enfoque cualitativo. Se aplicaron entrevistas semi-estructuradas. Para el tratamiento de la información se utilizó la teoría Fundamentad, de Strauss & Corbin (2002).

Representações dos beneficiários do Rendimento Social de Inserção

Dissertação apresentada à Escola Superior de Educação de Paula Frassinetti para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Intervenção Comunitária, especialização em Contextos de risco.

Joint Optimization for Social Content Delivery in Wireless Networks

Over the last decade, success of social networks has significantly reshaped how people consume information. Recommendation of contents based on user profiles is well-received. However, as users become dominantly mobile, little is done to consider the impacts of the wireless environment, especially the capacity constraints and changing channel. In this dissertation, we investigate a centralized wireless content delivery system, aiming to optimize overall user experience given the capacity constraints of the wireless networks, by deciding what contents to deliver, when and how. We propose a scheduling framework that incorporates content-based reward and deliverability. Our approach utilizes the broadcast nature of wireless communication and social nature of content, by multicasting and precaching. Results indicate this novel joint optimization approach outperforms existing layered systems that separate recommendation and delivery, especially when the wireless network is operating at maximum capacity. Utilizing limited number of transmission modes, we significantly reduce the complexity of the optimization. We also introduce the design of a hybrid system to handle transmissions for both system recommended contents ('push') and active user requests ('pull'). Further, we extend the joint optimization framework to the wireless infrastructure with multiple base stations. The problem becomes much harder in that there are many more system configurations, including but not limited to power allocation and how resources are shared among the base stations ('out-of-band' in which base stations transmit with dedicated spectrum resources, thus no interference; and 'in-band' in which they share the spectrum and need to mitigate interference). We propose a scalable two-phase scheduling framework: 1) each base station obtains delivery decisions and resource allocation individually; 2) the system consolidates the decisions and allocations, reducing redundant transmissions. Additionally, if the social network applications could provide the predictions of how the social contents disseminate, the wireless networks could schedule the transmissions accordingly and significantly improve the dissemination performance by reducing the delivery delay. We propose a novel method utilizing: 1) hybrid systems to handle active disseminating requests; and 2) predictions of dissemination dynamics from the social network applications. This method could mitigate the performance degradation for content dissemination due to wireless delivery delay. Results indicate that our proposed system design is both efficient and easy to implement.

Inteligência coletiva e gestão do conhecimento: uma aplicação na rede social Facebook

Social networks rely on concepts such as collaboration, cooperation, replication, flow, speed, interaction, engagement, and aim the continuous sharing and resharing of information in support of the permanent social interaction. Facebook, the largest social network in the world, reached, in May 2016, the mark of 1.09 billion active users daily, draining 161.7 million hours of users’ attention to the website every day. These users share 4.75 billion units of content daily. The research presented in this dissertation aims to investigate the management of knowledge and collective intelligence, from the introduction of mechanisms that aim to enable users to manage and organize current information in the feeds from Facebook groups in which they participate, turning Facebook into a collective knowledge and information management device that goes far beyond mere interaction and communication among people. The adoption of Design Science Research methodology is intended to instill the "genes" of collective intelligence, as presented in the literature, in the computational artifact being developed, so that intelligence can be managed and used to create even more knowledge and intelligence to and by the group. The main theoretical contribution of this dissertation is to discuss knowledge management and collective intelligence in a complementary and integrated manner, showing how efforts to obtain one also contribute to leveraging the other.

Russian social networks on the web: cohesion and coherence in Vkontakte

In this thesis connections between messages on the public wall of the Russian social network Vkontakte are analysed and classified. A total of 1818 messages from three different Vkontakte groups were collected and analysed according to a new framework based on Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) research into cohesion and Simmons’s (1981) adaptation of their classification for Russian. The two categories of textuality, cohesion and coherence, describe the linguistic connections between messages. The main aim was to find out how far the traditional categories of cohesion are applicable to an online social network including written text as well as multimedia-files. In addition to linguistic cohesion the pragmatic and topic coherence between Vkontakte messages was also analysed. The analysis of pragmatic coherence classifies the messages with acts according to their pragmatic function in relation to surrounding messages. Topic coherence analyses the content of the messages, describes where a topic begins, changes or is abandoned. Linguistic cohesion, topic coherence and pragmatic coherence enable three different types of connections between messages and these together form a coherent communication on the message wall. The cohesion devices identified by Halliday and Hasan and Simmons were found to occur in these texts, but additional devices were also identified: these are multimodal, graphical and grammatical cohesion.

ADVERTISEMENT ALLOCATION AND TRUST MECHANISMS DESIGN IN SOCIAL NETWORKS

Social network sites (SNS), such as Facebook, Google+ and Twitter, have attracted hundreds of millions of users daily since their appearance. Within SNS, users connect to each other, express their identity, disseminate information and form cooperation by interacting with their connected peers. The increasing popularity and ubiquity of SNS usage and the invaluable user behaviors and connections give birth to many applications and business models. We look into several important problems within the social network ecosystem. The first one is the SNS advertisement allocation problem. The other two are related to trust mechanisms design in social network setting, including local trust inference and global trust evaluation. In SNS advertising, we study the problem of advertisement allocation from the ad platform's angle, and discuss its differences with the advertising model in the search engine setting. By leveraging the connection between social networks and hyperbolic geometry, we propose to solve the problem via approximation using hyperbolic embedding and convex optimization. A hyperbolic embedding method, \hcm, is designed for the SNS ad allocation problem, and several components are introduced to realize the optimization formulation. We show the advantages of our new approach in solving the problem compared to the baseline integer programming (IP) formulation. In studying the problem of trust mechanisms in social networks, we consider the existence of distrust (i.e. negative trust) relationships, and differentiate between the concept of local trust and global trust in social network setting. In the problem of local trust inference, we propose a 2-D trust model. Based on the model, we develop a semiring-based trust inference framework. In global trust evaluation, we consider a general setting with conflicting opinions, and propose a consensus-based approach to solve the complex problem in signed trust networks.

Towards Automated Business Process Deduction through a Social and Collaborative Platform

Part 12: Collaboration Platforms

Mathematical Programming Models for Influence Maximization on Social Networks

In this dissertation, we apply mathematical programming techniques (i.e., integer programming and polyhedral combinatorics) to develop exact approaches for influence maximization on social networks. We study four combinatorial optimization problems that deal with maximizing influence at minimum cost over a social network. To our knowl- edge, all previous work to date involving influence maximization problems has focused on heuristics and approximation. We start with the following viral marketing problem that has attracted a significant amount of interest from the computer science literature. Given a social network, find a target set of customers to seed with a product. Then, a cascade will be caused by these initial adopters and other people start to adopt this product due to the influence they re- ceive from earlier adopters. The idea is to find the minimum cost that results in the entire network adopting the product. We first study a problem called the Weighted Target Set Selection (WTSS) Prob- lem. In the WTSS problem, the diffusion can take place over as many time periods as needed and a free product is given out to the individuals in the target set. Restricting the number of time periods that the diffusion takes place over to be one, we obtain a problem called the Positive Influence Dominating Set (PIDS) problem. Next, incorporating partial incentives, we consider a problem called the Least Cost Influence Problem (LCIP). The fourth problem studied is the One Time Period Least Cost Influence Problem (1TPLCIP) which is identical to the LCIP except that we restrict the number of time periods that the diffusion takes place over to be one. We apply a common research paradigm to each of these four problems. First, we work on special graphs: trees and cycles. Based on the insights we obtain from special graphs, we develop efficient methods for general graphs. On trees, first, we propose a polynomial time algorithm. More importantly, we present a tight and compact extended formulation. We also project the extended formulation onto the space of the natural vari- ables that gives the polytope on trees. Next, building upon the result for trees---we derive the polytope on cycles for the WTSS problem; as well as a polynomial time algorithm on cycles. This leads to our contribution on general graphs. For the WTSS problem and the LCIP, using the observation that the influence propagation network must be a directed acyclic graph (DAG), the strong formulation for trees can be embedded into a formulation on general graphs. We use this to design and implement a branch-and-cut approach for the WTSS problem and the LCIP. In our computational study, we are able to obtain high quality solutions for random graph instances with up to 10,000 nodes and 20,000 edges (40,000 arcs) within a reasonable amount of time.

Rede social de excelência: qualidade na participação institucional: O caso de Moura

O problema da falta de participação cívica é uma das condicionantes para o desenvolvimento local de qualquer território, pelo que devem ser estruturadas medidas e processos que facilitem e incentivem uma participação mais ativa, pautada por critérios de qualidade. É nesse sentido que o presente trabalho de investigação, tendo por base a aplicação de um inquérito por questionário a todos os dirigentes e técnicos envolvidos na Rede Social de Moura e a realização de uma sessão focus group com os membros do Núcleo Executivo, apresenta os processos de participação existentes e a desenvolver no programa e, desta forma, elabora um modelo de participação institucional de qualidade, com base nas orientações da ISO 9001 e respetivos oito princípios (enfoque no cliente, liderança, envolvimento dos colaboradores, abordagem por processos, abordagem sistemática da gestão, melhoria contínua, abordagem factual para a tomada de decisão e relações de mútuo beneficio com fornecedores). ABSTRACT: The problem of the lack of civic participation is one of the setbacks of local development in every territory, thus making it necessary to structure measures and processes to ease and encourage a more active participation, ruled by quality criteria. Taking that into consideration, this work of investigation, based on an inquiry of questions taken to all the directors and technicians involved in the Social Network of Moura, and a Focus Group session held with the members of the Executive Group, shows the existing levels of participation, as well as of those yet to develop, in the programme and therefore creates a model of institutional participation of quality, under the ISO 9001 directives and its eight principles (emphasis on the client, leadership, associate involvement, process approach, systematic approach of management, continuous improvement, factual approach on decision making and mutual benefit relationships with suppliers).

Intervenção social em parceria – rede social de Silves

Dissertação de Mestrado, Educação Social, Escola Superior de Educação e Comunicação, Universidade do Algarve, 2016

Pontes invisíveis. Estratégias de actuação de redes sociais no combate à pobreza e exclusão social: Um estudo de caso com redes sociais portuguesas

As Redes Sociais, enquanto estrutura social, são um sistema aberto, altamente dinâmico e susceptível de inovação (Castells, 2000) constituindo-se como um importante recurso para combater a pobreza e a exclusão social, através de uma acção concertada e coerente. No presente estudo, apresentam-se os resultados de um estudo qualitativo cujo objectivo foi o de conhecer os benefícios da actuação em rede como estratégia de combate à pobreza e exclusão social. Realizou-se uma entrevista semi-estruturada a 13 colaboradores de organizações, não-lucrativas, que operam em rede. As respostas foram analisadas a partir da metodologia qualitativa Consesual Qualitative Research (Clara Hill, 1997). Os resultados obtidos permitiram obter como principal atributo estratégico, da actuação em rede, a orientação para o processo, enquanto medida adaptável e geradora de resultados. As conclusões obtidas são discutidas quanto ao seu contributo para incentivar as políticas sociais que considerem o reconhecimento e activação da solidariedade social local. / ABSTRACT: Social Networks, as a social structure, are an open system, highly dynamic and capable of innovation (Castells, 2000) constituting itself as an important resource to combat Poverty and Social Exclusion, through a concerted and coherent action. ln this study, we present the results of a qualitative investigation whose aim was to know the benefits of building social networks of support in fighting against poverty and social exclusion. There were performed semi-structured interviews with 13 employees of non­profit organizations, operating in network. The responses were analyzed based on Consensual Qualitative Research (Clara Hill, 1997). The results have enabled the orientation to process as the main strategic attribute of the implementation Strategies of Social Network as an adaptive measure and as capable of generating results. The main conclusions are discussed in terms of its contribution to promote social policies that consider the recognition and activation of local charities.