This thesis deals with the problem of constructing social networks with topic modeling. To be more specific, it describes how we identify the local communities where people share same interests as well as link this groups together to construct social networks. These problems will be addressed in the course of discussion, and corresponding practical solutions will be provided. I will present the...

Many local and global environmental challenges are tragedies-of-the-commons dilemmas in which private and collective interests are frequently at odds. Recent developments in social psychological theory and research suggest that in such commons dilemmas people are not just motivated by narrow (economic) self-interest but that they also consider the broader implications of their decisions for oth...

Mediation is a process through which a third party facilitates discussion among disputing parties to help them identify interests and ideally reach an amicable solution. Elder mediation is a growing subspecialty to address conflicts involving older adults, primarily involving caregiving or finances. Mediation is theorized to empower participants but critics argue that it can exacerbate power im...

A company can experience various benefits and effects on business performance from advertising on a social networking site, including an increase in its number of fans and advertisement views and/or an increase in sales and return on investment (ROI). While some companies find Facebook an effective platform for social networking advertisements, others deem it ineffective. These mixed results of...

Characterizing and understanding behavior and interests of social media members is crucial for enhancing several practical applications in this environment, such as target marketing or recommendation. Aiming to characterize and exploit such behavior and interests, this work proposes Someato, a novel online analytics tool. Besides a characterization methodology, Someato comprises a search and a ...

Along with the popularity of mobile social networks (MSNs) is the increasing danger of privacy breaches due to user location exposures. In this work, we take an initial step towards quantifying location privacy leakage from MSNs by matching the users’ shared locations with their real mobility traces. We conduct a three-week real-world experiment with 30 participants and discover that both direc...

The rapid evolution of modern social networks motivates the design of networks based on users’ interests. Using popular social media such as Facebook and Twitter, we show that this new perspective can generate more meaningful information about the networks. In this paper, we model userinterest based networks by deducing intent from social media activities such as comments and tweets of millions...