abstract: With the rise of Online Social Networks (OSN) in the last decade, social network analysis has become a crucial research topic. The OSN graphs have unique properties that distinguish them from other types of graphs. In this thesis, five month Tweet corpus collected from Bangladesh - between June 2016 and October 2016 is analyzed, in order to detect accounts that belong to groups. These groups consist of official and non-official twitter handles of political organizations and NGOs in Bangladesh. A set of network, temporal, spatial and behavioral features are proposed to discriminate between accounts belonging to individual twitter users, news, groups and organization leaders. Finally, the experimental results are presented and a subset of relevant features is identified that lead to a generalizable model. Detection of tiny number of groups from large network is achieved with 0.8 precision, 0.75 recall and 0.77 F1 score. The domain independent network and behavioral features and models developed here are suitable for solving twitter account classification problem in any context. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Computer Science 2017

This thesis addresses the aesthetics, ideologies and practicalities of contemporary European Improvised Music-making - this term referring to the tradition that emerged from 1960s American jazz and free jazz, and that remains, arguably, one of today's most misunderstood and under-represented musical genres. Using a multidisciplinary approach drawing on Grounded Theory, Ethnography and Social Network Analysis, and bounded by Berlin's cosmopolitan local scene of 2012-13, I define Improvised Music as a field of differing-yet-interconnected practices, and show how musicians and listeners conceived of and differentiated between these sub-styles, as well as how they discovered and learned to appreciate such a hidden, 'difficult' and idiosyncratic art form. Whilst on the surface Improvised Music might appear chaotic and beyond analysis in conventional terms, I show that, just like any other music, Improvised Music has its own genre-specific conventions, structures and expectations, and this research investigates its specific modes of performance, listening and appreciation - including the need to distinguish between 'musical' and 'processual' improvisatory outcomes, to differentiate between different 'levels' of improvising, and to separate the group and personal levels of the improvisatory process. I define improvised practices within this ifeld as variable combinations of 'composed' (pre-planned) and 'improvised' (real-time) elements, and examine the specific definitions of 'risk', 'honesty', 'trust', and 'good' and `bad' music-making which mediate these choices - these distinctions and evaluatory frameworks leading to a set of proposed conventions and distinctions for Improvised Music listening and production. This study looks at the representation of identity by improvising musicians, the use of social and political models as analogies for the improvisatory process (including the interplay between personal freedom of expression and the construction of coherent collective outcomes), and also examines the multiple functions of recording, in a music that was ostensibly only meant for the moment of its creation. All of this serves to address several popular misconceptions concerning Improvised Music, and does so directly from the point of view of a large sample of its most important practitioners and connoisseurs. Such findings provide key insights into the appreciation and understanding of Improvised Music itself (both for newcomers and those already adept in its ways), and this thesis offers important suggestions for scholars of Musicology, Ethnomusicology, Sociology of Music, Improvisation Studies, Performance Studies and Music/Cognitive Psychology, as well as for those concerned with improvisation and creativity in more general, non-musical, terms.

Submitted by Clebson Anjos (clebson.leandro54@gmail.com) on 2016-02-16T18:41:25Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 4249092 bytes, checksum: 55d1ea47091d7ea9ff4bd08be7f46c6b (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-02-16T18:41:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 4249092 bytes, checksum: 55d1ea47091d7ea9ff4bd08be7f46c6b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-08-27 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The scientific knowledge is not just the discovery of new facts and laws, but also in its publication. Aiming to understand the complex scientific production system analysis techniques have been applied in many digital repositories. Therefore, the social network analysis (SNA) has been a topic of interest of several studies in recent years. Social networks can be established from the relationship between people or the relationship of information that can be analyzed to assist decision making. The purpose of this thesis is to present a technique that makes it possible to characterize areas of scientific research by building semantic networks vary in time. These networks are built building on the co-occurrence of keywords in the titles of scientific papers, used to represent the evolution of research themes addressed by means of publication over time. / O conhecimento científico não se resume na descoberta de fatos e leis novas, mas também em sua publicação. Visando compreender o complexo sistema de produção científica, inúmeras técnicas de análise vêm sendo aplicadas em repositórios digitais. Assim sendo, a análise de redes sociais (ARS) tem sido um tópico de interesse de diversos estudos realizados nos últimos anos. As redes sociais podem ser estabelecidas a partir da relação entre pessoas ou da relação de informações que podem ser analisadas a fim de auxiliar a tomada de decisão. A proposta desta dissertação é apresentar uma técnica que possibilite caracterizar áreas de pesquisa científica através da construção de redes semânticas variáveis no tempo. Essas redes são construídas tomando por base a coocorrência de palavras-chave nos títulos de artigos científicos, que servem para representar a evolução dos temas de pesquisa abordados pelos meios de publicação ao longo do tempo.

A Biometrologia é uma ciência emergente que estuda os conhecimentos em Biologia e Metrologia para desenvolver aplicações críticas em diversas áreas. Nesta Tese, pretende-se trabalhar especificamente as escolhas teóricas na produção de conhecimento biometrológico, numa perspectiva arqueológica da pesquisa de inspiração foucaultiana. Tendo a produção científica da Biometrologia brasileira como objeto de pesquisa, esta Tese propõe o seguinte problema: pode ser encontrado na produção científica em Biometrologia princípios de inteligibilidade e de análise em termos de vida, de métrica e de logos? A tese aqui defendida é de que sim, de que esta produção científica é um elemento elucidatório das relações de saber/poder estabelecidas segundo distintas séries e disciplinas. O problema proposto exigiu uma pesquisa comprometida com uma ontologia de vida, métrica e logos, fazendo desta tese uma declaração, dentre as muitas possíveis, de como é o objeto de estudo e os procedimentos pelos quais foi possível descrevê-lo. Além da Introdução e da Conclusão, esta tese divide-se em três seções, um anexo e dois apêndices: Biometrologia: o novo discurso científico do biopoder, discutindo o conceito de Biometrologia, sua emergência e função; Procedimentos Arqueológicos na análise do discurso biometrológico, mostrando que existe na arqueologia foucaultiana alguns elementos que permitem um modelo analítico para o objeto de pesquisa; Análise das escolhas teóricas em Biometrologia, analisando a rede de conhecimentos formada no âmbito da Biometrologia brasileira, identificando o agenciamento de enunciações e o pertencimento a certas disciplinas que se encontram na ordem do discurso metrológico contemporâneo; Anexo: Métricas utilizadas no estudo da Vida, definindo as grandezas mensuráveis segundo áreas-chave biometrológicas; Apêndice I: A produção científica em Biometrologia, sumarizando e identificando enunciações e reinscrições, resumindo e propondo séries distintas na visão constitutiva daquela produção científica; Apêndice II: Matriz de disciplinas por seriação, relacionando as disciplinas engajadas pela Biometrologia e as séries propostas nos procedimentos metodológicos da Tese. / Biometrology is an emerging science that studies Biology and Metrology in order to develop critical applications in several areas. In this thesis, we intend to work specifically the theoretical choices in the production of biometrological knowledge, in an archaeological perspective of the Foucaultian-inspired research. Having the scientific production of Brazilian Biometrology as an object of research, this thesis proposes the following problem: can one find in the scientific production in Biometrology principles of intelligibility and analysis in terms of life, metrics and logos? The thesis here defended is that, yes, this scientific production is an elucidatory element of the relations of knowledge / power established according to different series and disciplines. The proposed problem required a research committed to an ontology of life, metrics and logos, making this thesis a statement, among many possible, of how it is the object of study and the procedures by which it was possible to describe it. In addition to the Introduction and Conclusion, this thesis is divided into three sections, an appendix and two appendices: Biometrology: the new scientific discourse of biopower, discussing the concept of Biometrology, its emergence and function; Archaeological procedures in the analysis of the biometrological discourse, showing that there is in Foucaultian archeology some elements that allow an analytical model for the research object; Analysis of the theoretical choices in Biometrology, analyzing the knowledge network formed in the scope of Brazilian Biometrology, identifying the agency of enunciations and belonging to certain disciplines that are in the order of the contemporary metrological discourse; Annex: Metrics used in the study of Life, defining measurable quantities according to key biometrological areas; Appendix I: The scientific production in Biometrology, summarizing and identifying enunciations and reinscriptions, summarizing and proposing different series in the constitutive vision of that scientific production; Appendix II: Matrix of disciplines by seriation, relating the disciplines engaged by Biometrology and the series proposed in the methodological procedures of the Thesis.

Os contextos em que as organizações operam e agem mudaram drasticamente nos últimos anos. Neste sentido, o espaço físico e a organização encontram-se conectados. As famosas palavras de Winston Churchill em 19431: “Nós moldamos nossos prédios e nossas construções nos moldam”, indiretamente já se referia à importância do espaço físico em relação a interação entre indivíduos. O design dos espaços de trabalho é normalmente guiado por topologias (formas de configurar layouts: aberto, fechado, celular) que descrevem e determinam a qualidade das interações. Mas a questão do layout do espaço como fator de influência da troca de conhecimentos entre colaboradores é uma dimensão pouco considerada os pesquisadores da gestão organizacional, ficando restrito a arquitetos e designers a preocupação com a elaboração e configuração de um layout físico favorável. Considerando este contexto, o presente trabalho propõe, como objetivo geral, desenvolver uma sistemática que permita analisar a disposição do ambiente de trabalho com base na análise de redes sociais (SNA) com o intuito de promover a interação social e a transferência de conhecimentos entre os membros de uma equipe. A proposta desta dissertação é baseada em uma abordagem combinada de métodos quantitativos e estudo de caso. Nesses termos, os dados desta pesquisa buscam analisar a interação do layout físico com a transferência do conhecimento no ambiente de uma equipe médica. Essa interação foi analisada através da teoria das redes sociais. Como principais resultados obtiveram-se: (i) a sistematização da literatura sobre o tema da transferência do conhecimento e análise de redes sociais; (ii) análise e aplicação da prática das análises das redes sociais e estudo do layout e (iii) proposta de uma versão inicial de um artefato para auxiliar profissionais da gestão organizacional que se interessem em analisar a rede social de um ambiente antes de alterar ou elaborar um novo layout para que os colaboradores possam ter mais interação e com isso melhorar a transferência do conhecimento e, consequentemente, a inovação organizacional. / The contexts in which organizations operate and act have changed dramatically in recent years. In this sense, the physical space and the organization are connected. The famous words said by Winson Churchill in 1943: “We shape our buildings and afterwards our building shape us”, indirectly already noted the importance of the physical space and interaction between individuals. The design of office spaces is often guided by general typologies (cellular, open and closed office) to describe and determine the quality of interactions in office structures. However, the layout of spaces, as an influence factor for knowledge sharing between people, is a dimension little considered by researchers from the organizational management field. Architects and designers are the only concerned about the design and configuration of a physical layout to strengthen such interaction. Based in this context, this work proposes, as main objective, to develop a systematic that allows analyzing the work environment disposition based on both a network analysis and on a knowledge transfer perspective. This proposal is based on a combined quantitative and a case study approach. In these terms, the collected data was used to analyze the interaction of a medical team when considered the physical layout of their work environment. The interaction was analyzed through the theory of social networks. As main results, we highlight the following: (i) the systematization of the literature on the subject of knowledge transfer and social network analysis; (ii) a practical application of social networks in the studies of office layouts; and, (iii) the proposal of an artifact to help management professionals to analyze the social network of an environment before changing or developing a new layout focused on the improvement of people interaction and, consequently, improving the organizational innovation.

Com o aumento dos usuários acessando a internet no Brasil, cresce a quantidade de conteúdo produzido por brasileiros. Assim se torna importante classificar os melhores autores para que se tenha mais confiança nos textos lidos. Nesse sentido, esta dissertação faz um estudo sobre a descoberta de autoridades em tópicos na blogosfera brasileira. O escopo de estudo e análise é a plataforma de publicação de blogs, Blogspot, sobre os blogueiros que se identificam como brasileiros. Para tanto, foram coletados nove milhões de postagens do ano de 2012 e considerados os comentários como fonte de relacionamento entre os blogueiros para gerar uma rede social. Essa rede foi usada para experimentos do algoritmo de identificação de autoridades em tópicos. O algoritmo utilizado como base é o Topic PageRank, separando os diversos tópicos da blogosfera pelas tags que os usuários definem em suas postagens e posteriormente construindo a lista das autoridades em tais tópicos. Experimentos realizados demonstram que o método proposto resulta em melhor ranqueamento que o algoritmo original do PageRank. Cabe salientar que foi feita uma caracterização dos dados coletados por um questionário aplicado a quatro mil autores. / With the intesification of users accessing the Internet in Brazil, the amount of content produced by Brazilians increases. Thus, it becomes important to classify the best authors to have more confidence in the texts read. In this sense, this work presents a study on subject of topic authorities discovery in the Brazilian blogosphere. The scope of the study is the Blogspot platform, focusing on bloggers who identify themselves as Brazilians. To this end, we collected nine millions posts in the year of 2012 and considered the comments as a source of relationship between bloggers to generate a social network. This network was used for performing experiments considering the proposed approach to identify topic authorities. The algorithm used is based on the Topic PageRank, which can separate the different blogosphere’s topics by tags that users use on their posts, and then building the list of authorities on such topics. The experiments conducted show that the proposed approach results in better ranking than the original PageRank algorithm. We also characterize the collected database with a survey of over four thousand authors.

Internet tem sido uma importante fonte para as pessoas que buscam informações de saúde. Isto é particularmente problemático na perspectiva da Web 2.0. A Web 2.0 é a segunda geração da World Wide Web, onde os usuários interagem e colaboram uns com os outros como criadores de conteúdo. A falta de qualidade das informações médicas na Web 2.0 tem suscitado preocupações com os impactos prejudiciais que podem acarretar. São muitos os aspectos relacionados à qualidade da informação que devem ser investigados, como por exemplo, existe alguma evidência de que o autor tem alguma autoridade no domínio da saúde? Há indícios de que os autores são tendenciosos? Como saber se a fonte de informação tem reputação, como separar as fontes de boa qualidade das outras? Esses questionamentos se tornam mais evidentes quando se faz buscas no Twitter. O usuário precisa por si só selecionar o conteúdo que acredita que tenha qualidade entre as centenas de resultados. Nesse contexto, o principal objetivo deste trabalho é propor e avaliar uma abordagem que permita estimar a reputação de fontes de informação no domínio da saúde. Acredita-se que discussões sobre reputação só fazem sentido quando possuem um propósito e estão inseridas em um contexto. Sendo assim, considera-se que reputação é um atributo que um usuário se apropria quando a informação que ele divulga é crível e digna de confiança. As contribuições desta tese incluem uma nova metodologia para estimar a reputação e uma estrutura topológica de rede baseada no grau de interação entre atores sociais. O estudo permitiu compreender como as métricas afetam o ordenamento da reputação. Escolher a métrica mais apropriada depende basicamente daquilo que se quer representar. No nosso caso, o Pagerank funcionou como um “contador de arcos” representando apenas uma medida de popularidade daquele nó. Verificou-se que popularidade (ou uma posição de destaque na rede) não necessariamente se traduz em reputação no domínio médico. Os resultados obtidos evidenciaram que a metodologia de ordenamento e a topologia da rede obtiveram sucesso em estimar a reputação. Além disso, foi verificado que o ambiente Twitter desempenha um papel importante na transmissão da informação e a “cultura” de encaminhar uma mensagem permitiu inferir processos de credibilidade e consequentemente a reputação. / The Internet is an important source for people who are seeking healthcare information. This is particularly problematic in era of Web 2.0. The Web 2.0 is a second generation of World Wide Web, where users interact and collaborate with each other as creators of content. Many concerns have arisen about the poor quality of health-care information on the Web 2.0, and the possibility that it leads to detrimental effects. There are many issues related to information quality that users continuously have to ask, for example, is there any evidence that the author has some authority in health domain? Are there clues that the authors are biased? How shall we know what our sources are worth, how shall we be able to separate the bad sources from the good ones? These questions become more obvious when searching for content in Twitter. The user then needs to manually pick out high quality content among potentially thousands of results. In this context, the main goal of this work is to propose an approach to infer the reputation of source information in the medical domain. We take into account that, discussion of reputation is usually not meaningful without a specific purpose and context. Thus, reputation is an attribute that a user comprises, and the information disseminated by him is credible and worthy of belief. Our contributions were to provide a new methodology to Rank Reputation and a new network topological structure based on weighted social interaction. The study gives us a clear understanding of how measures can affect the reputation rank. Choosing the most appropriate measure depends on what we want to represent. In our case, the PageRank operates look alike “edges counts” as the “popularity” measures. We noticed that popularity (or key position in a graph) does not necessarily refer to reputation in medical domain. The results shown that our rank methodology and the network topology have succeeded in achieving user reputation. Additionally, we verified that in Twitter community, trust plays an important role in spreading information; the culture of “retweeting” allowed us to infer trust and consequently reputation.

A Assistência Farmacêutica (AF) é um conceito de prática profissional onde o usuário que precisa do medicamento é o mais importante beneficiário das ações do farmacêutico e dos demais profissionais de saúde que atendem este serviço, ou seja, o usuário é o centro da atenção destes profissionais. Ela, entretanto, não pode ser visualizada apenas pela função de dispensar medicamentos, mas sim como um serviço que complementa as ações em saúde, com um enfoque amplo, incorpora a multidisciplinaridade e a integralidade. O sucesso deste processo depende da participação das diferentes classes de profissionais da saúde, além dos usuários. Este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar os papéis, as formas de comunicação e os fluxos de informação que influenciam nas operações multiprofissionais de atendimento ao usuário na Assistência Farmacêutica. Para tanto, foi escolhido o município de Arroio do Tigre/RS onde foram entrevistados os médicos, enfermeiros, técnicos de enfermagem, farmacêuticos, agentes de saúde, dentistas, psicólogos e assistentes sociais envolvidos na rede multiprofissional de Assistência Farmacêutica do município. Os dados obtidos nas entrevistas foram analisados qualitativamente, com o apoio de planilhas no software Excel para identificação de padrões entre os respondentes. Os fluxos de comunicação/informação foram analisados com o auxílio da ferramenta de análise de redes sociais, o NodeXL. O estudo permitiu observar que há uma necessidade de melhoria da comunicação e do fluxo de informação existente entre os profissionais além de um aumento da clareza do conceito do sistema entre os envolvidos na rede de atendimento ao usuário, esclarecendo as responsabilidades e papéis de cada um dentro da rede para uma gestão de atendimento na AF mais eficaz. / The Pharmaceutical Services consists of a set of people with different relations among them, exchanging lots of information on a daily basis. Thus, it cannot be seen as just a function of dispensing drugs, but as a resource complementing healthcare actions, with a wide approach that incorporates a multidisciplinary and integrality. The success of this process depends on the participation of different classes of healthcare professionals, besides users. The aim of this paper is to study the roles, the forms of communication and information flows that influence multidisciplinary operations of service to users in Pharmaceutical Services. Therefore, the city of Arroio do Tigre/RS was chosen and interviews occurred with professionals such as doctors, nurses, nursing technicians, pharmacists, health workers, dentists, psychologists and social workers involved in the city’s Pharmaceutical Services multidisciplinary network. The data obtained from the interviews were qualitatively analyzed, with the support of Microsoft Excel’s spreadsheets for the identification of patterns among the interviewed. The communication/information flows were analyzed with the aid of NodeXL, a social network analysis tool. The study concluded that there is a need of communication and information flow improvement as well as a more clarity regarding the system concept among the professionals involved in the user service network, clarifying the accountabilities and roles of each one inserted in the network for a more effective drug management.

abstract: The current study examines the social structure of local street gangs in Glendale, Arizona. Literature on gang organization has come to different conclusions about gang organization, largely based on the methodology used. One consistent finding from qualitative gang research has been that understanding the social connections between gang members is important for understanding how gangs are organized. The current study examines gang social structure by recreating gang social networks using official police data. Data on documented gang members, arrest records, and field interview cards from a 5-year period from 2006 to 2010 were used. Yearly social networks were constructed going two steps out from documented gang members. The findings indicated that gang networks had high turnover and they consisted of small subgroups. Further, the position of the gang member or associate was a significant predictor of arrest, specifically for those who had high betweenness centrality. At the group level, density and measures of centralization were not predictive of group-level behavior; hybrid groups were more likely to be involved in criminal behavior, however. The implications of these findings for both theory and policy are discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Criminology and Criminal Justice 2013

abstract: Contemporary online social platforms present individuals with social signals in the form of news feed on their peers' activities. On networks such as Facebook, Quora, network operator decides how that information is shown to an individual. Then the user, with her own interests and resource constraints selectively acts on a subset of items presented to her. The network operator again, shows that activity to a selection of peers, and thus creating a behavioral loop. That mechanism of interaction and information flow raises some very interesting questions such as: can network operator design social signals to promote a particular activity like sustainability, public health care awareness, or to promote a specific product? The focus of my thesis is to answer that question. In this thesis, I develop a framework to personalize social signals for users to guide their activities on an online platform. As the result, we gradually nudge the activity distribution on the platform from the initial distribution p to the target distribution q. My work is particularly applicable to guiding collaborations, guiding collective actions, and online advertising. In particular, I first propose a probabilistic model on how users behave and how information flows on the platform. The main part of this thesis after that discusses the Influence Individuals through Social Signals (IISS) framework. IISS consists of four main components: (1) Learner: it learns users' interests and characteristics from their historical activities using Bayesian model, (2) Calculator: it uses gradient descent method to compute the intermediate activity distributions, (3) Selector: it selects users who can be influenced to adopt or drop specific activities, (4) Designer: it personalizes social signals for each user. I evaluate the performance of IISS framework by simulation on several network topologies such as preferential attachment, small world, and random. I show that the framework gradually nudges users' activities to approach the target distribution. I use both simulation and mathematical method to analyse convergence properties such as how fast and how close we can approach the target distribution. When the number of activities is 3, I show that for about 45% of target distributions, we can achieve KL-divergence as low as 0.05. But for some other distributions KL-divergence can be as large as 0.5. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Computer Science 2014