Trust evaluation for indirectly connected nodes using link community information

Inspired by recent empirical research on link communities, we borrow some important ideas and concepts for our own research to provide a more reasonable computation model of transitive trust. The key advantages of using link community methodology is to reflect on the nature of the social network features of Hierarchy and Overlap. Our research mainly resolves the computation of trust transitivity in which two nodes do not have any direct links to any link community. In this research, we discover a new direction analyzing trust transitivity. By using a social network game, we found that the link community methodology is a natural way to analyze trust in social networks. We also discovered, even in a small social network, trust has certain community features.

Local development planning and community empowerment in decentralised Indonesia : the role of local planning in improving self organising capabilities of local communities in Takalar, Indonesia

This study investigates the role of development planning in empowering rural communities in Indonesia’s decentralised era. Evidence is produced that the combination of procedural justice in planning development and social learning in its implementation can assist self-organisation and help empower local communities. Significant benefits are shown to result in: the acquisition and use of collective resources; the development of shared knowledge, skills, values and trust; community leadership; and the development of social networks. Two features of this empowerment model are community-based planning, utilising participatory rural appraisal at the level of the natural village, and the organisation of collective action. These are shown to be effective ways of incorporating procedural justice and social learning in self organisation and community empowerment.

T-OSN : a trust evaluation model in online social networks

Now days, the online social networks (OSN) have gained considerable popularity. More and more people use OSN to share their interests and make friends, also the OSN helps users overcome the geographical barriers. With the development of OSN, there is an important problem users have to face that is trust evaluation. Before user makes friends with a stranger, the user need to consider the following issues: Can a stranger be trusted? How much the stranger can be trusted? How to measure the trust of a stranger? In this paper, we take two factors, Degree and Contact Interval into consideration, which produce a new trust evaluation model (T-OSN). T-OSN is aimed to solve how to evaluate the trust value of an OSN user, also which is more efficient, more reliable and easy to implement. Base on our research, this model can be used in wide range, such as online social network (OSN) trust evaluation, mobile network message forwarding, ad hoc wireless networking, routing message on Internet and peer-to-peer file sharing network. The T-OSN model has following obvious advantages compare to other trust evaluate methods. First of all, it is not base on features of traditional social network, such as, distance and shortest path. We choose the special features of OSN to build up the model, that is including numbers of friends(Degree) and contact frequency(Contact Interval). These species features makes our model more suitable to evaluate OSN users trust value. Second, the formulations of our model are quite simple but effective. That means, to calculate the result by using our formulations will not cost too much resources. Last but not least, our model is easy to implement for an OSN website, because of the features that we used in our model, such as numbers of friends and contact frequency are easy to obtain. To sum up, our model is using a few resources to obtain a valuable trust value that can help OSN users to solve an important security problem, we believe that will be big step - or development of OSN.

Improved residential electricity demand management through analysis of the customer perspective

Peak electricity demand requires substantial investment to update transmission, distribution and generation infrastructure. A successful community peak demand reduction project was examined to identify residential consumer motivational and contextual factors involved in their decision to adopt/not adopt interventions. Energy professionals actively worked to achieve community 'peer' membership and by becoming a trusted information source, facilitated voluntary home energy assessment requests from over 80% of the residential community. By combining and tailoring interventions to the specific needs and motivations of individual householders and the community, interventions promoting energy conservation and efficiency can be effective in achieving sustained reduction in peak demand.

Transitional justice, demobilization, and peacebuilding amid political violence: Examining individual preferences in the Caribbean coast of Colombia

The conventional wisdom in the transitional justice literature is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. This article suggests that this may also be true within a given state. The current paper reports on quantitative and qualitative data from 184 participants in a survey conducted in the Caribbean coast of Colombia. Results suggest widespread support for transitional justice mechanisms – such as perpetrator accountability, public acknowledgement and structural change – but dissatisfaction with national-level initiatives, specifically the 2005 Justice and Peace Law. Yet, despite a distrust of the national government and protracted conflict, individuals report social trust, community cohesion and reliance on local government institutions. These attitudes and behaviours suggest that decentralised transitional justice mechanisms may be more effective in meeting victims' needs. Moreover, analyses indicate that individual preferences are influenced by community factors, such as the presence of demobilised paramilitaries, which can be addressed through more localised approaches to promote peacebuilding. The paper concludes with best practices derived from the findings.

THERE GOES THE ELECTORAL NEIGHBORHOOD: LOCAL NETWORKS, ATTRIBUTION OF RESPONSIBILITY, AND THE (UN) FAIRNESS OF ELECTIONS

During the last two decades there have been but a handful of recorded cases of electoral fraud in Latin America. However, survey research consistently shows that often citizens do not trust the integrity of the electoral process. This dissertation addresses the puzzle by explaining the mismatch between how elections are conducted and how the process is perceived. My theoretical contribution provides a double-folded argument. First, voters’ trust in their community members (“the local experience”) impacts their level of confidence in the electoral process. Since voters often find their peers working at polling stations, negative opinions about them translate into negative opinions about the election. Second, perceptions of unfairness of the system (“the global effect”) negatively impact the way people perceive the transparency of the electoral process. When the political system fails to account for social injustice, citizens lose faith in the mechanism designed to elect representatives -and ultimately a set of policies. The fact that certain groups are systematically disregarded by the system triggers the notion that the electoral process is flawed. This is motivated by either egotropic or sociotropic considerations. To test these hypotheses, I employ a survey conducted in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala during May/June 2014, which includes a population-based experiment. I show that Voters who trust their peers consistently have higher confidence in the electoral process. Whereas respondents who were primed about social unfairness (treatment) expressed less confidence in the quality of the election. Finally, I find that the local experience is predominant over the global effect. The treatment has a statistically significant effect only for respondents who trust their community. Attribution of responsibility for voters who are skeptics of their peers is clear and simple, leaving no room for a more diffuse mechanism, the unfairness of the political system. Finally, now I extend analysis to the Latin America region. Using data from LAPOP that comprises four waves of surveys in 22 countries, I confirm the influence of the “local experience” and the “global effect” as determinants of the level of confidence in the electoral process.