scholarly journals Evolutionary Computation in Social Propagation over Complex Networks: A Survey

Author(s):  
Tian-Fang Zhao ◽  
Wei-Neng Chen ◽  
Xin-Xin Ma ◽  
Xiao-Kun Wu

AbstractSocial propagation denotes the spread phenomena directly correlated to the human world and society, which includes but is not limited to the diffusion of human epidemics, human-made malicious viruses, fake news, social innovation, viral marketing, etc. Simulation and optimization are two major themes in social propagation, where network-based simulation helps to analyze and understand the social contagion, and problem-oriented optimization is devoted to contain or improve the infection results. Though there have been many models and optimization techniques, the matter of concern is that the increasing complexity and scales of propagation processes continuously refresh the former conclusions. Recently, evolutionary computation (EC) shows its potential in alleviating the concerns by introducing an evolving and developing perspective. With this insight, this paper intends to develop a comprehensive view of how EC takes effect in social propagation. Taxonomy is provided for classifying the propagation problems, and the applications of EC in solving these problems are reviewed. Furthermore, some open issues of social propagation and the potential applications of EC are discussed. This paper contributes to recognizing the problems in application-oriented EC design and paves the way for the development of evolving propagation dynamics.

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-42
Author(s):  
György Kocziszky ◽  
Dóra Szendi

Abstract The international literature is paying significant and increasing attention to the analysis of the regions’ innovation potential, and its active contribution to economic growth and competitiveness. Beside the classical, technical innovation, also the social innovation is getting even more emphasis. It can solve as alternative basically in the case of the peripheral territories. The convergence of peripheries is a stressed priority in the European Union. The territorial disparities are resulting in significant social and political problems also in the case of the Visegrad countries’ regions. The authors in their research represent a possible method for the measurement of regional (NUTS-2) level social innovation potential on the example of the Visegrad countries, and they also analyse the causes and consequences of disparities. The applied complex social innovation index can be calculated as a result of three pillars (economic, social, culture and attitude), and several components. As a result of the created patterns can be concluded that compared to the economic indicators, the disadvantage of the peripheries is not so significant in the case of the social innovation index, because of the complex character of the index. In the second part of the research, the authors analyse and evaluate also the methods, which can be adequate for increasing the social innovation potential.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Joseph Van Bavel ◽  
Elizabeth Ann Harris ◽  
Philip Pärnamets ◽  
Steve Rathje ◽  
Kimberly Doell ◽  
...  

The spread of misinformation, including “fake news,” propaganda, and conspiracy theories, represents a serious threat to society, as it has the potential to alter beliefs, behavior, and policy. Research is beginning to disentangle how and why misinformation is spread and identify processes that contribute to this social problem. We propose an integrative model to understand the social, political, and cognitive psychology risk factors that underlie the spread of misinformation and highlight strategies that might be effective in mitigating this problem. However, the spread of misinformation is a rapidly growing and evolving problem; thus scholars need to identify and test novel solutions, and work with policy makers to evaluate and deploy these solutions. Hence, we provide a roadmap for future research to identify where scholars should invest their energy in order to have the greatest overall impact.


Author(s):  
Alexandra-Niculina Babii

The digital era has determined a very easy creation and propagation of fake news. As a consequence, it has become harder for people to fight this malicious phenomenon. However, the only weapon that can have results in this informational war is critical thinking. But who should use it? The creators of fake news that do this for different reasons? The social platforms that allow the circulation of fake news with ease? Mass media which does not always verify with much attention and rigour the information they spread? The Governments that should apply legal sanctions? Or the consumer that receives all the fake news, him being the final target? Even if critical thinking would be useful for every actor on fake news’ stage, the one who needs it the most is the consumer. This comes together with the big responsibility placed on his shoulders. Even if others are creating and spreading disinformation, the consumer must be aware and be careful with the information he encounters on a daily basis. He should use his reasoning and he should not believe everything just because it is on the Internet. How can he do that? Critical thinking seems to be a quite difficult tool to use, especially for non-specialized individuals. This paper’s aim is to propose a simplified model of critical thinking that can contribute to detecting fake news with the help of people’s self judgement. The model is based on theories from Informal Logic considering the structure of arguments and on Critical Discourse Analysis theories concerning the patterns found in the content of the information.


Author(s):  
Giandomenico Di Domenico ◽  
Annamaria Tuan ◽  
Marco Visentin

AbstractIn the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, unprecedent amounts of fake news and hoax spread on social media. In particular, conspiracy theories argued on the effect of specific new technologies like 5G and misinformation tarnished the reputation of brands like Huawei. Language plays a crucial role in understanding the motivational determinants of social media users in sharing misinformation, as people extract meaning from information based on their discursive resources and their skillset. In this paper, we analyze textual and non-textual cues from a panel of 4923 tweets containing the hashtags #5G and #Huawei during the first week of May 2020, when several countries were still adopting lockdown measures, to determine whether or not a tweet is retweeted and, if so, how much it is retweeted. Overall, through traditional logistic regression and machine learning, we found different effects of the textual and non-textual cues on the retweeting of a tweet and on its ability to accumulate retweets. In particular, the presence of misinformation plays an interesting role in spreading the tweet on the network. More importantly, the relative influence of the cues suggests that Twitter users actually read a tweet but not necessarily they understand or critically evaluate it before deciding to share it on the social media platform.


Information ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 248
Author(s):  
Simone Leonardi ◽  
Giuseppe Rizzo ◽  
Maurizio Morisio

In social media, users are spreading misinformation easily and without fact checking. In principle, they do not have a malicious intent, but their sharing leads to a socially dangerous diffusion mechanism. The motivations behind this behavior have been linked to a wide variety of social and personal outcomes, but these users are not easily identified. The existing solutions show how the analysis of linguistic signals in social media posts combined with the exploration of network topologies are effective in this field. These applications have some limitations such as focusing solely on the fake news shared and not understanding the typology of the user spreading them. In this paper, we propose a computational approach to extract features from the social media posts of these users to recognize who is a fake news spreader for a given topic. Thanks to the CoAID dataset, we start the analysis with 300 K users engaged on an online micro-blogging platform; then, we enriched the dataset by extending it to a collection of more than 1 M share actions and their associated posts on the platform. The proposed approach processes a batch of Twitter posts authored by users of the CoAID dataset and turns them into a high-dimensional matrix of features, which are then exploited by a deep neural network architecture based on transformers to perform user classification. We prove the effectiveness of our work by comparing the precision, recall, and f1 score of our model with different configurations and with a baseline classifier. We obtained an f1 score of 0.8076, obtaining an improvement from the state-of-the-art by 4%.


2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-56
Author(s):  
Nanna Søvsø Mikkelsen ◽  
Kasper Tang Vangkilde
Keyword(s):  

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-42
Author(s):  
Jafni Rianson

From the scope according to the teaching function of the Social Sciences seems clear concept (Expanding Communnity Approach)  which starts from the things nearest to the students (families) to the further (global). The fact that the case is still much do teachers in the field, a learning process that dominates without regard to the basic ability of students, (Teacher Contered) without involving students actively in it . In general problem in this research is the extent to which the effectiveness of the inquiry model of ' social' can improve learning outcomes of students in the Social Sciences in the sixth grade at SDN 12 Jurai Limes Tower District IV District, the South Coast, in the academic year 2013/2014? This type of research is classroom action research (classroom action research), which has the ultimate objective is to improve the quality of learning in schools, educational relevance, quality of the education, education management efficiency. The research location is in the sixth grade at SDN 12 Limes Tower District IV Jurai, South Coastal District , the school year 2013/2014 . research subjects are students of class VI SDN 12 Limes Tower , Genab the semester, academic year 2013/2014. The final goal of teaching social studies is the formation of the learner as an intelligent social actors (Socially Intelligent Actor) which is formed from a touch of pedagogy . Based on the research showed an increase in the quality of students in the sixth grade value SDN No. 12 Limes Tower, in the academic year 2013/2014, the graph continues to rise, excellent 61%, good 9.5% and quite 23% and increased sense of solidarity between friends, group shows real changes that have an impact on everyday life including relationships with people such as interviews and visits. Of the overall activities carried out can be concluded that the model of the inquiry socially very suitable to be applied to examine the social phenomena that arise in the community, a fact primary school age children third grade had been able to carry out the stages of the inquiry by the hypothesis as the direction in problem solving and uses the fact as a hypothesis.    


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Susie Riva-Mossman ◽  
Henk Verloo

The transformative process of investigating life stories and their impact on healthy aging has only recently been explored. The relationship between hope and individual healthy aging strategies is still an under-researched area. This study contributes to filling the knowledgeability gap. The authors examine senior stories of hope and the experience of self-determination and well-being. The study documents the social learning processes of older people as they narratively search for solutions and imagine a hopeful future of healthy aging. A group of four older women participated in a semi-structured filmed interview, questioned by an academic expert. Healthy aging emerged as an important concern among all participants, confirming the need to actively learn how to age well. This exploratory research brought forth thematic clusters, orienting shared value solutions to demographic change. Qualitative research methods reinforce lifelong, collaborative learning processes that not only produce scientific literature, but also put in place relational networks that can grow and endure over time, generating social innovation. The film documented the role of hope and resilience in healthy aging.


2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (6) ◽  
pp. 1344-1361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frédéric Dufays

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify tensions that are emerging in the invention and implementation of social innovation by social entrepreneurial teams and highlights elements that influence the type of tension encountered. Design/methodology/approach Four cases are selected theoretically, studied individually, and compared to one another to identify tensions and patterns of tensions. Findings The findings reveal the predominant tensions related to goals and identity during social innovation invention and those related to time and knowledge during social innovation implementation. The size of the entrepreneurial team, the nature of the social innovation, and the interest orientation – that is, the overlap between entrepreneurial team members and beneficiaries – are found to play a role in the type of tensions encountered and their content. Research limitations/implications The chosen research approach limits the generalizability of the research results. Replication in other settings and with other types of social innovation is therefore encouraged. Originality/value In contrast to most existing studies, this research focuses on nascent social innovation projects borne by teams. It proposes that social-business tensions are not necessarily predominant in social innovation management. It suggests the importance of interest orientation as an underestimated factor in the study of social entrepreneurship.


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