Introduction Online social networks, also known as Social Network Sites (SNS) are web-based services allowing users to communicate with each other whether for personal or professional usage. Boyd and Ellison have defined SNS in their paper as “Web Based Services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system (2) to articulate a list of other user...

this article explores the relative influence of individual and network-level effects on the emergence of online social relationships. using network modeling and data drawn from logs of social behavior inside the virtual world Second Life, we combine individualand network-level theories into an integrated model of online social relationship formation. Results reveal that time spent online and th...

The purpose of this dissertation research is to uncover the mechanisms that play a role in establishing innovation in online communities. In particular, this research examines how characteristics of language use, online identity and social structure can be used to characterize prominent participants, or leaders, and their role in creating and diffusing innovation. This research utilizes a numbe...

background: the internet is a phenomena that changes human, specially the younger generation’s, life in the 21st century. online communication is a common way of interacting among adolescents who experience feelings of social anxiety. the aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between social anxiety and online communication in adolescents. methods: three hundred and thirty studen...

• Analysis of 26 online communities (OLCs) for professional development of 1492 teachers • ‘Average’ teacher improves at least somewhat teaching skills & school subject knowledge • Room for improvement of communities; some communities function better than others • Communities with high embeddedness in offline social networks provide more benefits • Complete integration online & offline relation...

Understanding of evolutionary mechanism of online social networks is greatly significant for the development of network science. However, present researches on evolutionary mechanism of online social networks are neither deep nor clear enough. In this study, we empirically showed the essential evolution characteristics of Renren online social network. From the perspective of Pareto wealth distr...

Online social network attracts more researchers now. In this paper, we topologically analyze an online Chinese student social network--Xiaonei.com. We use Python language to crawl two datasets of Xiaonei in January and February, 2008. The degree distribution and small world phenomena are testified. We also use a social network analysis tool to analyze these two datasets from the viewpoint of so...