A Web (World Wide Web) foi uma maneira revolucionária de aproximar os indivíduos e fomentar a comunicação entre os mesmos. As plataformas que possibilitam ou facilitam a interação social muitas vezes não se traduzem em negócios sustentáveis. Parte desse problema recai sobre deficiências na definição de requisitos funcionais em devido a falta de compreensão sobre os atributos de valor na visão dos usuários (atuais ou potenciais) destes serviços. Neste contexto surgem os aplicativos sociais que englobam os mais diversos meios de compartilhamento de informações. Eles extraem, processam e classificam os dados publicados em plataformas, como as redes sociais, que podem ser definidas como o principal aplicativo social por permitir a construção de perfis públicos e semi-públicos, além de manter a interação entre usuário e conteúdo dinâmico. Cada rede social possui diferentes funcionalidades fazendo com que um usuário utilize diversas delas simultaneamente. O presente trabalho tem como objetivo principal levantar e analisar o valor percebido pelos usuários de três redes sociais amplamente difundidas, Facebook, Instagram e Linkedin à luz de seis categorias de atributos de valor para usuários de redes sociais: socialização, comunicação, informação, entretenimento, comercial e auto-expressão. Da mesma forma, os diferentes atributos de valor percebido serão relacionados com as funcionalidades disponíveis nestes aplicativos a fim de analisá-los e comprovar suas particularidades. Para tal, foram realizadas pesquisas com questionário, entrevistas semi-estruturadas e grupo focado. A partir dos desdobramentos dos atributos de valor em funcionalidades, torna-se possível desenvolver e comercializar com sucesso novas redes sociais ou manter redes já difundidas através da fidelização de seus clientes. Considera-se de grande importância a análise dos atributos de valor, por estes muitas vezes serem confundidos pelos usuários quando relacionados às funcionalidades existentes em redes sociais, podendo assim ser sugeridos desdobramentos desses atributos. / The Web (World Wide Web) was a revolutionary way to approach individuals and foster the communication among them. Platforms that enable or facilitate social interaction often do not become sustainable business. Part of this problem lies on deficiencies in the definition of functional requirements due to lack of understanding regarding the value given by the users (current or potential) to those services. Emerge, in this context, social applications that comprehend many different means of information sharing. Those applications extract, process and classify the published data on platforms such as social networks, which can be defined as the main social application because it allows the construction of public and semi-public profiles, and also maintain interaction between the user and the dynamic content. Each social network presents different features which makes the user to use several of them simultaneously. This research aims to understand and analyze the value given by the users of three widely disseminated social networking, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn taking into consideration six categories that can express this value of those social networking services: socialization, communication, information, entertainment, business and self-expression. Likewise, those different categories will be related to the available features in these applications in order to analyze and prove its particularities. For this purpose, surveys throughout questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and focused groups were used. It is relevant to understand what is considered important by the users of social networks. Relating the Social applications tools with the perceived value by users, it becomes possible to develop and successfully sell new social networks or to maintain well known networks through customer loyalty. It is also considered the importance of analyzing the perceived value, these have often being mistaken by users as related to existing features in social networks, splits these attributes can therefore be suggested.

A Web (World Wide Web) foi uma maneira revolucionária de aproximar os indivíduos e fomentar a comunicação entre os mesmos. As plataformas que possibilitam ou facilitam a interação social muitas vezes não se traduzem em negócios sustentáveis. Parte desse problema recai sobre deficiências na definição de requisitos funcionais em devido a falta de compreensão sobre os atributos de valor na visão dos usuários (atuais ou potenciais) destes serviços. Neste contexto surgem os aplicativos sociais que englobam os mais diversos meios de compartilhamento de informações. Eles extraem, processam e classificam os dados publicados em plataformas, como as redes sociais, que podem ser definidas como o principal aplicativo social por permitir a construção de perfis públicos e semi-públicos, além de manter a interação entre usuário e conteúdo dinâmico. Cada rede social possui diferentes funcionalidades fazendo com que um usuário utilize diversas delas simultaneamente. O presente trabalho tem como objetivo principal levantar e analisar o valor percebido pelos usuários de três redes sociais amplamente difundidas, Facebook, Instagram e Linkedin à luz de seis categorias de atributos de valor para usuários de redes sociais: socialização, comunicação, informação, entretenimento, comercial e auto-expressão. Da mesma forma, os diferentes atributos de valor percebido serão relacionados com as funcionalidades disponíveis nestes aplicativos a fim de analisá-los e comprovar suas particularidades. Para tal, foram realizadas pesquisas com questionário, entrevistas semi-estruturadas e grupo focado. A partir dos desdobramentos dos atributos de valor em funcionalidades, torna-se possível desenvolver e comercializar com sucesso novas redes sociais ou manter redes já difundidas através da fidelização de seus clientes. Considera-se de grande importância a análise dos atributos de valor, por estes muitas vezes serem confundidos pelos usuários quando relacionados às funcionalidades existentes em redes sociais, podendo assim ser sugeridos desdobramentos desses atributos. / The Web (World Wide Web) was a revolutionary way to approach individuals and foster the communication among them. Platforms that enable or facilitate social interaction often do not become sustainable business. Part of this problem lies on deficiencies in the definition of functional requirements due to lack of understanding regarding the value given by the users (current or potential) to those services. Emerge, in this context, social applications that comprehend many different means of information sharing. Those applications extract, process and classify the published data on platforms such as social networks, which can be defined as the main social application because it allows the construction of public and semi-public profiles, and also maintain interaction between the user and the dynamic content. Each social network presents different features which makes the user to use several of them simultaneously. This research aims to understand and analyze the value given by the users of three widely disseminated social networking, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn taking into consideration six categories that can express this value of those social networking services: socialization, communication, information, entertainment, business and self-expression. Likewise, those different categories will be related to the available features in these applications in order to analyze and prove its particularities. For this purpose, surveys throughout questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and focused groups were used. It is relevant to understand what is considered important by the users of social networks. Relating the Social applications tools with the perceived value by users, it becomes possible to develop and successfully sell new social networks or to maintain well known networks through customer loyalty. It is also considered the importance of analyzing the perceived value, these have often being mistaken by users as related to existing features in social networks, splits these attributes can therefore be suggested.

The thesis examines funkcionality of the Facebook pages for an organization and its management. The thesis deals with theory of the organization in sociology and ma-nagement conception, social networks, vitrual social networks and especially with social network Facebook. I analyze real functionality of the Facebook pages for ma-nagement of organization by the research with mixed collection of data. I propose the project of implementation the Facebook page in company Siot Trade in the practical part of the thesis.

M.Sc. (Computer Science) / With the phenomenal growth of the Online Social Network (OSN) industry in the past few years, users have resorted to storing vast amounts of personal information on these sites. The information stored on these sites is often readily accessible from anywhere in the world and not always protected by adequate security settings. As a result, user information can make its way, unintentionally, into the hands of not only other online users, but also online abusers. Online abusers, better known as cyber criminals, exploit user information to commit acts of identity theft, Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) and password recovery, to mention only a few. As OSN users are incapable of visualising the process of access to their OSN information, they may choose to never adjust their security settings. This can become synonymous with ultimately setting themselves up to becoming a victim of cyber crime. In this dissertation we aim to address this problem by proposing a prototype system, the Information Deduction Model (IDM) that can visualise and simulate the process of accessing information on an OSN profile. By visually explaining concepts such as information access, deduction and leakage, we aim to provide users with a tool that will enable them to make more informed choices about the security settings on their OSN profiles thereby setting themselves up for a pleasant online experience.

Orientadores: André Franceschi de Angelis, Regina Lúcia de Oliveira Moraes / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Tecnologia / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-27T04:53:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Libardi_PaulaLucieneOliveira_M.pdf: 1610224 bytes, checksum: a08b75cd1a30c421927617ee8b6ac8d4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015 / Resumo: A identificação de usuários falecidos em Redes Sociais Online é um desafio em aberto e, dado o tamanho das principais redes, abordagens que envolvam intervenção manual são impraticáveis. Usuários inativos por longo tempo inviabilizam soluções simples tais como a expiração de um prazo desde o último acesso, o que torna difícil a diferenciação entre inativos e falecidos. Esta pesquisa iniciou-se com o pressuposto de que o problema poderia ser parcialmente resolvido com métodos automáticos e a hipótese era de que dois métodos aqui propostos, um baseado na análise de frequência de mensagens trocadas entre usuários e outro fundamentado na combinação de informações da topologia da rede junto a inspeções de mensagens, poderiam identificar satisfatoriamente parte dos usuários falecidos. Para testar esta hipótese, recorreu-se à simulação computacional, usando topologias livre de escala e aleatória. O programa que simula as redes foi construído de forma a aplicar e testar os métodos de identificação de falecidos, seguindo padrões de projeto que permitem facilmente a troca ou o encadeamento dos algoritmos a validar. Dessa característica, originou-se um terceiro método, que é a combinação das saídas de algoritmos detectores aplicados anteriormente à rede. Os resultados da pesquisa validaram a hipótese, sendo que os dois métodos propostos inicialmente tiveram, cada qual, índices de acerto superiores a 70% na maioria dos casos simulados, independentemente da topologia da rede. Em ambos os métodos, no entanto, é necessária uma calibração de dois parâmetros operacionais, o que exige algum conhecimento da rede examinada e influencia na taxa de detecção. O último método mostrou-se bastante eficiente, com detecção correta superior a 94%, e capaz de absorver flutuações na taxa de detecção dos demais métodos advindas de suas respectivas parametrizações. Portanto, os objetivos da pesquisa foram plenamente atingidos, com a validação da hipótese inicial, a proposta de três métodos para a solução do problema e a geração de um produto tecnológico, o Demortuos, que é o software de simulação da rede e teste dos métodos, atualmente em processo de registro no Instituto Nacional da Propriedade Industrial (INPI). Adicionalmente, foram abertas possibilidades para o desenvolvimento de métodos automáticos para busca de outras classes de usuários / Abstract: Identifying deceased users in Online Social Networks is an open challenge and, given the size of the main networks, approaches involving manual intervention are impractical. Inactive users for a long time prevent simple solutions such as the expiration of a period since the last entry, making it difficult to differentiate between inactive and deceased users. This research began with the assumption that the problem could be partially solved with automated methods and the hypothesis was that two methods proposed here, one based on frequency analysis of messages exchanged between users and the other based on the combination of topology information network with the messages of inspections, could satisfactorily identify the part of deceased users. To test this hypothesis, we used the computer simulation, using free topologies of scale and random, the latter for comparison purposes. The program that simulates the network was constructed to implement and test the deceased identification methods, following design patterns that easily allow the exchange or the chain of algorithms to validate. This characteristic gave up a third method, which is combining the outputs of detectors algorithms previously applied to the network. The survey results validated the hypothesis, and the two proposed methods initially had, each, hit rates of over 70% in most cases simulated, regardless of the network topology. In both methods, however, two operating parameters calibration is necessary, which requires some knowledge of the network and examined influences the detection rate. The last method proved to be very efficient with proper detection above 94%, and able to absorb fluctuations in the detection rate of other methods resulting from their respective parameterization. Therefore, the research objectives were fully achieved, with the validation of the initial hypothesis, the proposed three methods for the solution of the problem and the generation of a technological product, Demortuos, which is the network simulation software and testing methods currently in the registration process at the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI). Moreover, possibilities are opened for the development of automated methods to search for other classes of users / Mestrado / Tecnologia e Inovação / Mestra em Tecnologia

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the types of communication activities adolescents reported as important and used most frequently, and how these communication preferences were reflected in adolescents' identity development status. Participants were approximately 600 new university students who completed a survey regarding 18 communication activities, along with the Erikson Psychosocial Stage Inventory identity subscale. Data analysis was conducted in two phases. To reduce the frequency and importance data to a manageable size, exploratory factor analyses and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted. Two identical factors were identified and validated related to the importance and the frequency of communication activities. The first factor comprised four items related to online ''performance": online gaming, participation in virtual reality settings, live chat with strangers, and live chat with groups unknown to the individual. The second factor comprised four communication activities that occurred on social networking sites as individuals created lasting "exhibits" of themselves: updating a personal profile, viewing the profiles of others, posting status messages, and sharing pictures or other content (articles, jokes, videos) with others. Analysis of means indicated that the three communication activities rated as most important and frequently used were face-to-face interaction, voice calls and text messaging. These were followed by social networking activities, and then writing activities such as blogging. The performative activities identified in the exploratory factor analysis were ranked as least important and least frequently used. Regression analysis revealed small but statistically significant negative relationships between the reported importance of performative activities and identity development status, and between the reported frequency of performative activities and identity development status. Small positive relationships were also identified between the importance of face-to-face interaction and identity development status, and the importance of voice phone calls and identity development status. Small positive relationships were also identified between the frequency of face-to-face communication and identity development, between the frequency of voice phone calls and identity development, and between the frequency of email use and identity development.

Within the context of social networks, existing methods for document classification tasks typically only capture textual semantics while ignoring the text’s metadata, e.g., the users who exchange emails and the communication networks they form. However, some work has shown that incorporating the social network information in addition to information from language is useful for various NLP applications, including sentiment analysis, inferring user attributes, and predicting interpersonal relations. In this thesis, we present empirical studies of incorporating social network information from the underlying communication graphs for various text classification tasks. We show different graph representations for different problems. Also, we introduce social network features extracted from these graphs. We use and extend graph embedding models for text classification. Our contributions are as follows. First, we have annotated large datasets of emails with fine-grained business and personal labels. Second, we propose graph representations for the social networks induced from documents and users and apply them on different text classification tasks. Third, we propose social network features extracted from these structures for documents and users. Fourth, we exploit different methods for modeling the social network of communication for four tasks: email classification into business and personal, overt display of power detection in emails, hierarchical power detection in emails, and Reddit post classification. Our main findings are: incorporating the social network information using our proposed methods improves the classification performance for all of the four tasks, and we beat the state-of-the-art graph embedding based model on the three tasks on email; additionally, for the fourth task (Reddit post classification), we argue that simple methods with the proper representation for the task can outperform a state-of-the-art generic model.

The use of online communication media has increased dramatically over recent years, with people from different age groups becoming users of online communication media. Many scholars have become interested in how online communication media influence or even reshape people's social networking practices and social networks. Most existing studies on the impacts of online communication media are based on the observation of online practices of the general population or the younger population, while older adults are rarely taken into consideration. An increasing number of elderly people have become active users of online communication media and they may differ from younger people in many aspects such as networking strategies. Studying the elderly population may therefore enhance our understanding of the utility of online connectivity. Based on 35 in-depth interviews of elderly WeChat users in urban China, which were conducted between December 2017 and March 2019, this study considers two major questions: (1) How do older adults use online communication media to network with their different social relations? (2) How do the online networking practices of older adults influence their social relations? The analysis focuses on two major issues to answer the second question: accessibility and the relational intimacy of social ties. By considering these two questions, this study aims to determine whether older adults become "networked individuals" or just stay "alone together" when they become active users of online communication media. My findings show that how elderly people use online communication media to interact with their social ties is different from younger users and their unique networking strategies have different digital impacts on their social relations. Elderly people often lack opportunities to socialise due to their age-related conditions. Online communication media can reduce their costs of manage social ties and serve an important channel to help many elderly users to (re)connect and develop their social ties, enhancing both the accessibility and relational intimacy of those social ties and help them to become "networked individuals"

Scholars have paid increased attention to the impact of social technologies on organizational communication but have yet to explore how their use has influenced organizational socialization, a process in which organizational newcomers transition into the organization. To fill this gap, this thesis investigates the use of social networking applications, a type of social technology, and its relation to three key processes in organizational socialization: information seeking, identity work, and workplace relationship development. Drawing on the concepts of affordance and paradox, this thesis examines how technological features and human factors such as mobile communication culture, technological frames of users, and organizational contexts shape processes of using social networking applications during organizational entry. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with Chinese organizational newcomers regarding their experience of using WeChat, the most popular social networking mobile application in China. Findings suggest that WeChat provides communicative opportunities that are otherwise not available in other communication platforms or channels. The participants obtain official and unofficial information from using WeChat. In addition to conventional, direct information seeking, the participants rely on persistence of information afforded by WeChat to indirectly access information. The participants seek information about identity expectations through indirect methods such as observation and experiment with their provisional identities using WeChat Moments. Details of mundane everyday work life and achievements are the most frequently mentioned content for identity construction. For workplace relationship development, the participants develop metaknowledge of their coworkers through browsing their coworkers' posts from WeChat Moments. WeChat work groups provide opportunities for newcomers to initiate and develop relationships with their coworkers with low social costs. Despite that WeChat provides lots of benefits, the participants describe WeChat as a problematic tool in that they could be trapped in paradoxical situations when they are concerned with engagement in organizational communication flows, construction of flexible identities, genres of professional communication enabled by WeChat, and blurred boundaries between professional and personal life. Dealing with these paradoxes provides opportunities for newcomers to learn technology culture of their organizations, reflect on their technological frames, and adjust their expectations and behaviors with respect to WeChat use. This technologically occasioned learning is an unexpected outcome of responding to the paradoxes of using WeChat during organizational entry. This thesis extends organizational communication research to provide an initial exploration of the use of social technologies in organizational socialization, uncovering how social networking sites and applications both enable and constrain information seeking, identity work, and workplace relationship development. It also provides insights into how various individual, interpersonal, and organizational factors influence the perceived affordances of social networking mobile applications and how these factors interact to shape the paradoxical user experience. With their wide adoption in the contemporary workplace, social networking sites and applications have huge potential to help newcomers transition into new organizations and have become an important aspect in organizational socialization. By learning and adapting to the norms of use for social networking sites and applications in new organizations and making sense of paradoxes in their user experience, newcomers can begin to understand the technology culture of their new organization. This thesis argues that it is necessary to reconceptualize organizational socialization, taking into consideration distinctive processes enabled and constrained by social technologies, and to reflect upon how organizational tactics and the design of social technologies can help newcomers to learn, to adapt, and to thrive in their organizations.

Traditional marketing models are swiftly being upended by the advent of online social networks. Yet, practicing firms that are engaging with online social networks neither have a reliable theory nor sufficient practical experience to make sense of the phenomenon. Extant theory in particular is based on observations of the real world, and may thus not apply to online social networks. Practicing firms may consequently be misallocating a large amount of resources, simply because they do not know how the online social networks with which they interact are organized. The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate how online social networks that are in stark contrast to real-world social networks behave and how they get organized. In particular, I explore how network structure and information flow within the network impact each other, and how they affect the phenomenon of influence in online social networks. I have collected retrospective data from Twitter conversations about six YouTube product categories (Music, Entertainment, Comedy, Science, Howto and Sports) in continuous time for a period of three months. Measures of network structure (Scale Free Metric, Assortativity and Small World Metric), network flows (Total Paths, Total Shortest Paths, Graph Diameter, Average Path Length, and Average Geodesic Length) and influence (Eigenvector Centrality/Centralization) were computed from the data. Experimental measures such as power law distributions of paths, shortest paths and nodal eigenvector centrality were introduced to account for node-level structure. Factor analysis and regression analysis were used to analyze the data and generate results. The research conducted in this dissertation has yielded three significant findings. 1. Network structure impacts network information flow, and conversely; network flow and network structure impact the network phenomenon of influence. However, the impact of network structure and network flow on influence could not be identified in all instances, suggesting that it cannot be taken for granted. 2. The nature of influence within a social network cannot be understood just by analyzing undirected or directed networks. The behavioral traits of individuals within the network can be deduced by analyzing how information is propagated throughout the network and how it is consumed. 3. An increase or decrease in the scale of a network leads to the observation of different organizational processes, which are most likely driven by very different social phenomena. Social theories that were developed from observing real-world networks of a relatively small scale (hundreds or thousands of people) consequently do not necessarily apply to online social networks, which can exhibit significantly larger scale (tens of thousands or millions of people). The primary contribution of this dissertation is an enhanced understanding of how online social networks, which exhibit contrasting characteristics to social networks that have been observed in the real world, behave and how they get organized. The empirical findings of this dissertation may allow practicing managers that engage with online social networks to allocate resources more effectively, especially in marketing. The primary limitations of this research are the inability to identify the causes of change within networks, glean demographic information and generalize across contexts. These limitations can all be overcome by follow-on studies of networks that operate in different contexts. In particular, further study of a variety of online social networks that operate on different social networking platforms would determine the extent to which the findings of this dissertation are generalizable to other online social networks. Conclusions drawn from an aggregation of these studies could serve as the foundation of a more broadly-based theory of online social networks.