The importance of social media is growing day by day because consumers increasingly use online platforms to facilitate social interaction. One new form of social media is microblog. The real time and ubiquitous communication that can deliver to a network of people is a great benefit for marketers to build online brand communities. The paper investigates the communication between the company and consumers based on BenQ’s case in Taiwan. The focuses lie in addressing the types of topic, techniques for marketing purposes and eWOM. These findings should assist marketers and academics in their understanding of brand communities on social media. / text

Rumors always trigger public panic in China, while the advanced Internet technology has tremendously influenced the daily life of the Chinese. Thus, the dynamics of rumor spreading via the social media in China are worthwhile discussing. In order to fulfill the aim of this research, one of the prevalent Chinese social media sites, the Sina microblog, is introduced and analyzed within the context of the salt-buying frenzy incident that occurred in China in 2011. Various theoretical approaches, from the sociological and media studies perspectives, are introduced to form the framework for analysis. The relevant data and materials were collected via questionnaires with Chinese Internet users, while previous academic research and publications provide supportive materials. From the analysis of this social media site and contemporary Chinese circumstances, it was seen that the Guanxi network extended and enlarged the influence of online rumors to offline Chinese. In other words, the Guanxi network, expanded by social media, can be considered as the most important part of the dynamic process of rumor spreading in China. However, the openness and freedom of the Internet atmosphere were found to be the main factors in eliminating online rumors.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-16T15:23:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 2257797 bytes, checksum: d4b9a895bb94870c08fed80687bfcaa6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-09-01 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / It can be considered as an essential characteristic of human beings to search for information in order to reduce uncertainties and doubts. Accordingly, we developed this research for the Masters Program in Information Science at the Federal University of Paraíba, seeking to analyze Twitter as a repository of information sharing. As a corpus analytical, this research focuses on nine councilor s microblogging, relating speeches and actions of parliamentarians. The social networks grant, easy and quickly, that people get involved at internet (a site) sharing diverse information between them. Among the various social networks at internet, it is given emphasis to the personification phenomenon and consequent personal exhibitionism on the Internet: the blogs, specifically, the microblogs, which have similar blogs features, as individual posts, adding the dynamics and immediacy of the instant messenger, e.g. Twitter. Twitter has long for five years and is used for thousands of people in the most different ways: to answer the question-design guide (What are you doing?); to answer today s question-design guide (What is happening?); professionals to advertise; to spread news published in media like newspaper, radio, television etc. There are several types of information available on Twitter for every Twitter user registered. In this work, we carried out a categorization about information available for the councilors researched, taking into account that the process of dissemination/sharing of information consists of three distinct phases: production, availability and use of information. We conclude that the communication and storage of the information provided on Twitter could subsidize the political memory and its relation to the speech and practice. / Pode-se considerar como característica essencial do ser humano a busca por informações na tentativa de reduzir incertezas, dúvidas. Nessa perspectiva, realizouse um estudo, durante o mestrado do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciência da Informação na Universidade Federal da Paraíba, em busca de analisar o Twitter enquanto repositório de compartilhamento de informações. Como corpus analítico a pesquisa debruça-se sobre os microblogs de nove vereadores relacionando discursos e ações dos parlamentares. As redes sociais possibilitam que, de forma fácil e rápida, várias pessoas se concentrem em um mesmo local na internet (um site) compartilhando as mais diversas informações entre si. Dentre várias redes sociais na internet, é dada ênfase a um fenômeno de personificação e consequente exibicionismo pessoal na internet: os blogs, especificamente, os microblogs, com características similares aos blogs, com postagens individuais, porém, muito mais rápidos e fáceis de usar, gerando dinamicidade e instantaneidade similar a um mensageiro instantâneo, a exemplo do Twitter. O Twitter, com cinco anos de existência, já é utilizado por milhões de pessoas em todo o mundo das mais diversas formas: para responder a pergunta-guia de sua concepção (O que você está fazendo?); para responder a atual pergunta-guia (O que está acontecendo?); para fazer anúncios profissionais; para propagar notícias veiculadas em mídias como jornais, rádio, televisão etc. Existem diversos tipos de informações disponibilizadas no Twitter por cada usuário que possui uma conta no microblog. Neste trabalho, realizou-se uma categorização das informações emitidas pelos pesquisados levando em consideração o processo de disseminação/compartilhamento de informação composto de três momentos: produção, disponibilização e uso da informação. Conclui-se que a comunicação e armazenamento das informações disponibilizadas no Twitter, pode subsidiar a memória política e sua relação com o discurso e a prática.

The integration of ICT in our daily life reaches levels that have leaded us to regard them as indispensable to the daily chores. The virtual media contributes to the internalization of a mental model that emphasizes connectivity. This context justifies the academic interest in developing research projects that focus on the field of virtual media. To achieve the purpose to observe power relations that underlie the microblogs, we took the opening pages of Twitter, Federal University of Sergipe (UFS), Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and Universidade de São Paulo ( USP). We set the following objectives: i. highlight features of the virtual domain through the characterization of specific notions of the field, ii. situate microblog as a genre, considering its compositional structure and the support that is played, iii. evaluate the emergence of hypertext as a basis for digital textual genres; comment on the language in this context, iv. Identify discursive structures that contribute to the naturalization of power and control procedures; v. understand how social structures and discursive structures automate a discourse that dictates the urgent need for visibility and simulate notions of unrestricted freedom of expression. In the first chapter, we conceptualize some terms of cyberculture. We took Castells (2010) to deal with concept of internet; with Vaz (2008) we talk about networking and with Santaella (2003) and Primo (2008b) we brought the concept of media; texts of Levy (1998) comment about virtual to finalize making a few statements about globalization, backed up by Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2002), Sodré (2010), Moraes (2010), Britto (2009) and Chauí (2006). In the second chapter, we followed Marcuschi (2005) and Bakhtin (2003) to define the notion of gender adopted, we use the constructs of Komesu (2005), Recuero (2003) and France (2008) among others authors to characterize blog and we followed Zago (2008), Java et al. (2007) and Huberman et al. (2008) in characterizing the microblog. Also in this section, we briefly consider language in the digital media (Marcuschi, 2005 and Soares, 2002) and then we got into the question of support (mainly Marcuschi, 2009, Chartier, 1998). The third chapter dealt with the Critical Discourse Analysis from the sociocognitive view advocated by van Dijk (1985, 2008 and others). In the last chapter, we describe the methodological procedures used in data collection. Simple observation coupled with concepts of CDA based the interpretation of the corpus made of 36 posts. Then we proceed to the description of the methodology and composition of the corpus, we draw the profile of the institutions surveyed and we began to analyze data. The results confirmed the hypothesis that discursive structures related to social structures are responsible for the automation of a discourse that preaches the undeniable visibility and unrestricted freedom of expression in computer-mediated communication and thus contribute to the naturalization of control procedures that feed vertical power relations. / A inserção das TIC em nosso cotidiano chega a níveis que já nos induzem a considerá-las como indispensáveis aos afazeres diários. A mídia virtual colabora para a introjeção de um modelo mental valorativo da conectividade. Esse contexto justifica o interesse acadêmico no desenvolvimento de pesquisas que se debrucem sobre o domínio da mídia virtual. Para atender à proposta de observar relações de poder que perpassam os microblogs a partir da constituição de discursos de instituições de ensino superior, tomamos como objeto de trabalho as páginas iniciais do Twitter da Universidade Federal de Sergipe (UFS), da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) e da Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Estabelecemos como objetivos específicos: i. destacar particularidades do domínio virtual por meio da caracterização de noções específicas desse campo; ii. situar o microblog como gênero textual, considerando sua estrutura composicional e o suporte em que é reproduzido; iii. avaliar a emergência do hipertexto como base para os gêneros textuais digitais; tecer considerações sobre a linguagem nesse âmbito; iv. Identificar estruturas discursivas que contribuem para a naturalização de procedimentos de controle e poder; v. compreender como estruturas sociais e estruturas discursivas se relacionam de modo a automatizar um discurso que dita a premência por visibilidade e ilude quando simula liberdade de expressão irrestrita. Para fundamentar a pesquisa, conceituamos alguns termos próprios da cibercultura. Partimos de estudo de Castells (2010) para tratar de internet; com Vaz (2008), discorremos sobre rede; com Santaella (2003) e Primo (2008b), trouxemos o conceito de mídia; fizemos observações sobre o virtual com Lévy (1998), além de algumas colocações sobre globalização, embasadas em Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2002), Sodré (2010), Moraes (2010), Britto (2009) e Chauí (2006). Para delimitar a noção de gênero adotada, tomamos Marcuschi (2005) e Bakhtin (2003); usamos os construtos de Komesu (2005), Recuero (2003) e França (2008) entre outros para caracterizar blog e Zago (2008), Java et al. (2007) e Huberman et al. (2008) na caracterização do microblog. Fizemos breves considerações sobre linguagem no ambiente digital (MARCUSCHI, 2005 e SOARES, 2002) para depois entrarmos na questão do suporte (principalmente MARCUSCHI, 2009, CHARTIER, 1998). Estes conceitos foram articulados aos da Análise Crítica do Discurso a partir da visão sociocognitiva defendida por van Dijk (1985, 2008 entre outros). Os procedimentos metodológicos empregados na coleta de dados partiram da observação simples para interpretação, pelo viés da ACD, de corpus composto por 36 posts. Os resultados confirmaram a hipótese de que estruturas discursivas relacionadas a estruturas sociais são responsáveis pela automatização de um discurso que prega a visibilidade inconteste e a liberdade de expressão irrestrita na comunicação mediada por computador e assim contribuem para a naturalização de procedimentos de controle que alimentam relações de poder verticalizadas.

Microblogging is an increasingly popular form of social media. One of the most popular microblogging services is Twitter. The number of messages posted to Twitter on a daily basis is extremely large. Accordingly, it becomes hard for users to sort through these messages and find ones that interest them. Twitter offers search mechanisms but they are relatively simple and accordingly the results can be lacklustre. Through participation in the 2011 Text Retrieval Conference's Microblog Track, this thesis examines real-time ad hoc search using standard information retrieval approaches without microblog or Twitter specific modifications. It was found that using pseudo-relevance feedback based upon a language model derived from Twitter posts, called tweets, in conjunction with standard ranking methods is able to perform competitively with advanced retrieval systems as well as microblog and Twitter specific retrieval systems. Furthermore, possible modifications both Twitter specific and otherwise are discussed that would potentially increase retrieval performance. Twitter has also spawned an interesting phenomenon called hashtags. Hashtags are used by Twitter users to denote that their message belongs to a particular topic or conversation. Unfortunately, tweets have a 140 characters limit and accordingly all relevant hashtags cannot always be present in tweet. Thus, Twitter users cannot easily find tweets that do not contain hashtags they are interested in but should contain them. This problem is investigated in this thesis in three ways using learning methods. First, learning methods are used to determine if it is possible to discriminate between two topically different sets of a tweets. This thesis then investigates whether or not it is possible for tweets without a particular hashtag, but discusses the same topic as the hashtag, to be separated from random tweets. This case mimics the real world scenario of users having to sift through random tweets to find tweets that are related to a topic they are interested in. This investigation is performed by removing hashtags from tweets and attempting to distinguish those tweets from random tweets. Finally, this thesis investigates whether or not topically similar tweets can also be distinguished based upon a sub-topic. This was investigated in almost an identical manner to the second case. This thesis finds that topically distinct tweets can be distinguished but more importantly that standard learning methods are able to determine that a tweet with a hashtag removed should have that hashtag. In addition, this hashtag reconstruction can be performed well with very few examples of what a tweet with and without the particular hashtag should look like. This provides evidence that it may be possible to separate tweets a user may be interested from random tweets only using hashtags they are interested in. Furthermore, the success of the hashtag reconstruction also provides evidence that users do not misuse or abuse hashtags since hashtag presence was taken to be the ground truth in all experiments. Finally, the applicability of the hashtag reconstruction results to the TREC Microblog Track and a mobile application is presented.

Many municipalities are deciding how to engage their citizens through social media while, at the same time, the universe of social media applications continues to grow and evolve. As of May 2011, the government of the City of New Braunfels, Texas, is not using centralized social media to interact with its constituents. This report considers whether or not social media tools are appropriate to help the city reach three identified service goals: 1) strengthening emergency management and communications services; 2) providing the capability to serve as a direct-to-citizen news entity instead of relying on traditional media for messaging; and 3) increasing public participation and engagement. Possible options and unresolved issues associated with each goal are presented. The community demographic profile of New Braunfels, the city’s status as a small urban community, and citizen access to high-speed Internet service increases the likelihood that residents will be online and engaged with social media on a regular basis. Data regarding the ownership of mobile phones and the use of these devices to connect to the Internet, combined with growing interest in social media, supports the exploration of social media for crisis communications. Three types of social media applications (microblogs/status-sharing applications, public alert applications, and blogs) present possible options for the use of social media to support emergency communications. Existing patterns of local press coverage provide the city with the possible motivation to innovate its message delivery. Possible options that could facilitate the city’s engagement of social media for messaging include hiring a public information officer, conducting an audit of the city’s brand identity online, and examining social media applications used by the city’s market comparators, including micromedia, photo and video sharing, and blogs. While data is limited with respect to existing levels of civic engagement, establishing social media policies and metrics capable of adapting to changing technologies could provide city administrators with a reasonable perspective on the value of social media for improving public engagement and participation. / text

Microblogging is an increasingly popular form of social media. One of the most popular microblogging services is Twitter. The number of messages posted to Twitter on a daily basis is extremely large. Accordingly, it becomes hard for users to sort through these messages and find ones that interest them. Twitter offers search mechanisms but they are relatively simple and accordingly the results can be lacklustre. Through participation in the 2011 Text Retrieval Conference's Microblog Track, this thesis examines real-time ad hoc search using standard information retrieval approaches without microblog or Twitter specific modifications. It was found that using pseudo-relevance feedback based upon a language model derived from Twitter posts, called tweets, in conjunction with standard ranking methods is able to perform competitively with advanced retrieval systems as well as microblog and Twitter specific retrieval systems. Furthermore, possible modifications both Twitter specific and otherwise are discussed that would potentially increase retrieval performance. Twitter has also spawned an interesting phenomenon called hashtags. Hashtags are used by Twitter users to denote that their message belongs to a particular topic or conversation. Unfortunately, tweets have a 140 characters limit and accordingly all relevant hashtags cannot always be present in tweet. Thus, Twitter users cannot easily find tweets that do not contain hashtags they are interested in but should contain them. This problem is investigated in this thesis in three ways using learning methods. First, learning methods are used to determine if it is possible to discriminate between two topically different sets of a tweets. This thesis then investigates whether or not it is possible for tweets without a particular hashtag, but discusses the same topic as the hashtag, to be separated from random tweets. This case mimics the real world scenario of users having to sift through random tweets to find tweets that are related to a topic they are interested in. This investigation is performed by removing hashtags from tweets and attempting to distinguish those tweets from random tweets. Finally, this thesis investigates whether or not topically similar tweets can also be distinguished based upon a sub-topic. This was investigated in almost an identical manner to the second case. This thesis finds that topically distinct tweets can be distinguished but more importantly that standard learning methods are able to determine that a tweet with a hashtag removed should have that hashtag. In addition, this hashtag reconstruction can be performed well with very few examples of what a tweet with and without the particular hashtag should look like. This provides evidence that it may be possible to separate tweets a user may be interested from random tweets only using hashtags they are interested in. Furthermore, the success of the hashtag reconstruction also provides evidence that users do not misuse or abuse hashtags since hashtag presence was taken to be the ground truth in all experiments. Finally, the applicability of the hashtag reconstruction results to the TREC Microblog Track and a mobile application is presented.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(情報学) / 甲第22580号 / 情博第717号 / 新制||情||123(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院情報学研究科社会情報学専攻 / (主査)教授 吉川 正俊, 教授 黒橋 禎夫, 教授 田島 敬史, 教授 田中 克己(京都大学 名誉教授) / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Informatics / Kyoto University / DFAM

Use of spatial data has become an important aspect of data analysis. Use of location information can provide useful insight into the dataset. Advancement of sensor technologies and improved data connectivity have made it possible to the generation of large amounts of passively generated user location data. Apart from passively generated data from users, explicit effort has been made by commercial vendors to curate large amounts of location related data such as residential histories from a variety of sources such as credit records, litigation data, driving license records etc. Such spatial data, when linked with other datasets can provide useful insights. In this dissertation, we show that spatial information of data enables us to derive useful insights in domains of text analysis and epidemiology. We investigated primarily two types of data having spatial information - text data with location information and disease related data having residential address information. We show that in the case of text data, spatial information helps us find spatially informative topics. In the case of epidemiological data, we show residential information can be used to identify high risk spatial regions. There are instances where a primary analysis is not sufficient to establish a statistically robust conclusion. For instance, in domains such as epidemiology, where a finding is not considered to be relevant unless some statistical significance is established. We proposed techniques for significant tests which can be applied to text analysis, topic modelling, and disease mapping tasks in order to establish significance of the findings. / Computer and Information Science

Dynamic query expansion is a method of automatically identifying terms relevant to a target domain based on an incomplete query input. With the explosive growth of online media, such tools are essential for efficient search result refining to track emerging themes in noisy, unstructured text streams. It's crucial for large-scale predictive analytics and decision-making, systems which use open source indicators to find meaningful information rapidly and accurately. The problems of information overload and semantic mismatch are systemic during the Information Retrieval (IR) tasks undertaken by such systems. In this dissertation, we develop approaches to dynamic query expansion algorithms that can help improve the efficacy of such systems using only a small set of seed queries and requires no training or labeled samples. We primarily investigate four significant problems related to the retrieval and assessment of event-related information, viz. (1) How can we adapt the query expansion process to support rank-based analysis when tracking a fixed set of entities? A scalable framework is essential to allow relative assessment of emerging themes such as airport threats. (2) What visual knowledge discovery framework to adopt that can incorporate users' feedback back into the search result refinement process? A crucial step to efficiently integrate real-time `situational awareness' when monitoring specific themes using open source indicators. (3) How can we contextualize query expansions? We focus on capturing semantic relatedness between a query and reference text so that it can quickly adapt to different target domains. (4) How can we synchronously perform knowledge discovery and characterization (unstructured to structured) during the retrieval process? We mainly aim to model high-order, relational aspects of event-related information from microblog texts. / Ph. D. / Analysis of real-time, social media can provide critical insights into ongoing societal events. Where consequences and implications of specific events include monetary losses, threats to critical infrastructure and national security, disruptions to daily life, and a potential to cause loss of life and physical property. It is imperative for developing good ‘ground truth’ to develop adequate data-driven information systems, i.e., an authoritative record of events reported in the media cataloged alongside important dimensions. Availability of high-quality ground truth events can support various analytic efforts, e.g., identifying precursors of attacks, developing predictive indicators using surrogate data sources, and tracking the progression of events over space and time. A dynamic search result refinement is useful for expanding a general set of user queries into a more relevant collection. The challenges of information overload and misalignment of context between the user query and retrieved results can overwhelm both human and machine. In this dissertation, we focus our efforts on these specific challenges. With the ever-increasing volume of user-generated data large-scale analysis is a tedious task. Our first focus is to develop a scalable model that dynamically tracks and ranks evolving topics as they appear in social media. Then to simplify the cognitive tasks involving sense-making of evolving themes, we take a visual approach to retrieve situationally critical and emergent information effectively. This visual analytics approach learns from user’s interactions during the exploratory process and then generates a better representation of the data. Thus, improving the situational understanding and usability of underlying data models. Such features are crucial for big-data based decision & support systems. To make the event-focused retrieval process more robust, we developed a context-rich procedure that adds new relevant key terms to the user’s original query by utilizing the linguistic structures in text. This context-awareness allows the algorithm to retrieve those relevant characteristics that can help users to gain adequate information from social media about real-world events. Online social commentary about events is very informal and can be incomplete. However, to get the complete picture and adequately describe these events we develop an approach that models the underlying relatedness of information and iteratively extract meaning and denotations from event-related texts. We learn how to express the high-order relationships between events and entities and group them to identify those attributes that best explain the events the user is trying to uncover. In all the augmentations we develop, our strategy is to allow only very minimal human supervision using just a small set of seed event triggers and requires no training or labeled samples. We show a comprehensive evaluation of these augmentations on real-world domains - threats on airports, cyber attacks, and protests. We also demonstrate their applicability as for real-time analysis that provides vital event characteristics, and contextually consistent information can be a beneficial aid for emergency responders.