scholarly journals Impact of fixed choice design on blockmodeling outcomes

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anja Žnidaršič

The main goal of blockmodeling is to reveal the essential structure of the network based on patterns of relationships. Social network data usually contain different types of errors and one of them is caused by some limitation of number of selected actors in the research design. The impact of fixed choice design compared to free choice design on the results of blockmodeling are studied through simulations. The resulting blockmodels are compared with two indices where position membership of actors and the structure of the blockmodels are examined. Limiting the number of actors that can be selected has an impact on delineated blockmodel structure where the deletion of ties has higher effect than addition of them.

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (01) ◽  
pp. 216-219
Author(s):  
L. Toubiana ◽  
N Griffon ◽  

Summary Objectives: Summarize excellent current research in the field of Public Health and Epidemiology Informatics. Method: Synopsis of the articles selected for the IMIA Yearbook 2015. Results: Four papers from international peer-reviewed journals have been selected as best papers for the section on Public Health and Epidemiology Informatics. Conclusions: The selected articles illustrate current research regarding the impact and assessment of health IT and the latest developments in health information exchange.


Information ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 306
Author(s):  
Nikolaus Nova Parulian ◽  
Tiffany Lu ◽  
Shubhanshu Mishra ◽  
Mihai Avram ◽  
Jana Diesner

Observed social networks are often considered as proxies for underlying social networks. The analysis of observed networks oftentimes involves the identification of influential nodes via various centrality measures. This paper brings insights from research on adversarial attacks on machine learning systems to the domain of social networks by studying strategies by which an adversary can minimally perturb the observed network structure to achieve their target function of modifying the ranking of a target node according to centrality measures. This can represent the attempt of an adversary to boost or demote the degree to which others perceive individual nodes as influential or powerful. We study the impact of adversarial attacks on targets and victims, and identify metric-based security strategies to mitigate such attacks. We conduct a series of controlled experiments on synthetic network data to identify attacks that allow the adversary to achieve their objective with a single move. We then replicate the experiments with empirical network data. We run our experiments on common network topologies and use common centrality measures. We identify a small set of moves that result in the adversary achieving their objective. This set is smaller for decreasing centrality measures than for increasing them. For both synthetic and empirical networks, we observe that larger networks are less prone to adversarial attacks than smaller ones. Adversarial moves have a higher impact on cellular and small-world networks, while random and scale-free networks are harder to perturb. Also, empirical networks are harder to attack than synthetic networks. Using correlation analysis on our experimental results, we identify how combining measures with low correlation can aid in reducing the effectiveness of adversarial moves. Our results also advance the knowledge about the robustness of centrality measures to network perturbations. The notion of changing social network data to yield adversarial outcomes has practical implications, e.g., for information diffusion on social media, influence and power dynamics in social systems, and developing solutions to improving network security.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 4768
Author(s):  
Sanaa Kaddoura ◽  
Maher Itani ◽  
Chris Roast

With the increase in the number of users on social networks, sentiment analysis has been gaining attention. Sentiment analysis establishes the aggregation of these opinions to inform researchers about attitudes towards products or topics. Social network data commonly contain authors’ opinions about specific subjects, such as people’s opinions towards steps taken to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. Usually, people use dialectal language in their posts on social networks. Dialectal language has obstacles that make opinion analysis a challenging process compared to working with standard language. For the Arabic language, Modern Standard Arabic tools (MSA) cannot be employed with social network data that contain dialectal language. Another challenge of the dialectal Arabic language is the polarity of opinionated words affected by inverters, such as negation, that tend to change the word’s polarity from positive to negative and vice versa. This work analyzes the effect of inverters on sentiment analysis of social network dialectal Arabic posts. It discusses the different reasons that hinder the trivial resolution of inverters. An experiment is conducted on a corpus of data collected from Facebook. However, the same work can be applied to other social network posts. The results show the impact that resolution of negation may have on the classification accuracy. The results show that the F1 score increases by 20% if negation is treated in the text.


2015 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 301
Author(s):  
Armand Krikorian ◽  
Lily Peng ◽  
Zubair Ilyas ◽  
Joumana Chaiban

Methodology ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bonne J. H. Zijlstra ◽  
Marijtje A. J. van Duijn ◽  
Tom A. B. Snijders

The p 2 model is a random effects model with covariates for the analysis of binary directed social network data coming from a single observation of a social network. Here, a multilevel variant of the p 2 model is proposed for the case of multiple observations of social networks, for example, in a sample of schools. The multilevel p 2 model defines an identical p 2 model for each independent observation of the social network, where parameters are allowed to vary across the multiple networks. The multilevel p 2 model is estimated with a Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm that was implemented in free software for the statistical analysis of complete social network data, called StOCNET. The new model is illustrated with a study on the received practical support by Dutch high school pupils of different ethnic backgrounds.


Data in Brief ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 106898
Author(s):  
Cordelia Sophie Kreft ◽  
Mario Angst ◽  
Robert Huber ◽  
Robert Finger

Author(s):  
Jacqueline M. Burgette ◽  
Jacquelin Rankine ◽  
Alison J. Culyba ◽  
Kar-Hai Chu ◽  
Kathleen M. Carley

Objective/Aim: We describe best practices for modeling egocentric networks and health outcomes using a five-step guide. Background: Social network analysis (SNA) is common in social science fields and has more recently been used to study health-related topics including obesity, violence, substance use, health organizational behavior, and healthcare utilization. SNA, alone or in conjunction with spatial analysis, can be used to uniquely evaluate the impact of the physical or built environment on health. The environment can shape the presence, quality, and function of social relationships with spatial and network processes interacting to affect health outcomes. While there are some common measures frequently used in modeling the impact of social networks on health outcomes, there is no standard approach to social network modeling in health research, which impacts rigor and reproducibility. Methods: We provide an overview of social network concepts and terminology focused on egocentric network data. Egocentric, or personal networks, take the perspective of an individual who identifies their own connections (alters) and also the relationships between alters. Results: We describe best practices for modeling egocentric networks and health outcomes according to the following five-step guide: (1) model selection, (2) social network exposure variable and selection considerations, (3) covariate selection related to sociodemographic and health characteristics, (4) covariate selection related to social network characteristics, and (5) analytic considerations. We also present an example of SNA. Conclusions: SNA provides a powerful repertoire of techniques to examine how relationships impact attitudes, experiences, and behaviors—and subsequently health.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 237802312098525
Author(s):  
Balazs Kovacs ◽  
Nicholas Caplan ◽  
Samuel Grob ◽  
Marissa King

We utilize longitudinal social network data collected pre–COVID-19 in June 2019 and compare them with data collected in the midst of COVID in June 2020. We find significant decreases in network density and global network size following a period of profound social isolation. While there is an overall increase in loneliness during this era, certain social network characteristics of individuals are associated with smaller increases in loneliness. Specifically, we find that people with fewer than five “very close” relationships report increases in loneliness. We further find that face-to-face interactions, as well as the duration and frequency of interactions with very close ties, are associated with smaller increases in loneliness during the pandemic. We also report on factors that do not moderate the effect of social isolation on perceived loneliness, such as gender, age, or overall social network size.


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