Abstract not found

Economic Forum within the framework of the

A mundane but theoretically interesting and practically relevant situation presents itself on social networking sites: the co-presence of multiple groups important to an individual. This primarily qualitative study concentrates on the point of view of individual SNS users and their perspectives on multiple group affiliations. After charting the perceived multiplicity of groups on the social networking site Facebook, we investigated the relevance of multiple groups to the users and the effect of group co-presence on psychological identification processes. Users deal with group co-presence by managing the situation to prevent anticipated conflictive and identity-threatening situations. Their behavioral strategies consist of dividing the platform into separate spaces, using suitable channels of communication, and performing selfcensorship. Mental strategies include both the creation of more inclusive in-group identities and the reciprocity of trusting other users and being responsible. In addition to giving further evidence of the existence of group co-presence on SNSs, the study sheds light on the management of the phenomenon. Management of group co-presence should be supported, since otherwise users may feel the urge to resort to defensive strategies of social identity protection such as ceasing to use SNSs altogether or, less dramatically, limit their use according to “the least common denominator”. Hence, the phenomenon merits the attention of researchers, developers, and designers alike.

Abstract not found

The rapid growth of contemporary social network sites (SNSs) has coincided with an increasing concern over personal privacy. College students and adolescents routinely provide personal information on profiles that can be viewed by large numbers of unknown people and potentially used in harmful ways. SNSs like Facebook and MySpace allow users to control the privacy level of their profile, thus limiting access to this information. In this paper, we take the preference for privacy itself as our unit of analysis, and analyze the factors that are predictive of a student having a private versus public profile. Drawing upon a new social network dataset based on Facebook, we argue that privacy behavior is an upshot of both social influences and personal incentives. Students are more likely to have a private profile if their friends and roommates have them; women are more likely to have private profiles than are men; and having a private profile is associated with a higher level of online activity. Finally, students who have private versus public profiles are characterized by auniquesetofcultural preferences—of which the ‘‘taste for privacy’ ’ may be only asmallbutintegralpart. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2008.01432.x

Within an organizational setting, social capital facilitates knowledge management processes in that it enables individuals to locate useful information, draw on resources and make contributions to the network. This paper explores the relationship between various dimensions of organizational social capital and the use of an internal social network site (SNS). We hypothesize that the use of a SNS contributes to social capital within the organization in that SNS users are able to maintain larger networks of heterogeneous contacts. Additionally, the affordances of the site support social interaction between users, thus helping individuals maintain existing relationships and deepen developing ones. We find that bonding relationships, sense of corporate citizenship, interest in connecting globally, and access to new people and expertise are all associated with greater intensity of use of the social network site.

Social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace allow users to keep in touch with their friends, communicate and share content with them, as well as engage in other multiuser applications. What distinguishes such sites from

Abstract. Exposure and adoption of opinions in social networks are important questions in education, business, and government. We describe a novel application of pervasive computing based on using mobile phone sensors to measure and model the face-to-face interactions and subsequent opinion changes amongst undergraduates, during the 2008 US presidential election campaign. We find that self-reported political discussants have characteristic interaction patterns and can be predicted from sensor data. Mobile features can be used to estimate unique individual exposure to different opinions, and help discover surprising patterns of dynamic homophily related to external political events, such as election debates and election day. To our knowledge, this is the first time such dynamic homophily effects have been measured. Automatically estimated exposure explains individual opinions on election day. Finally, we report statistically significant differences in the daily activities of individuals that change political opinions versus those that do not, by modeling and discovering dominant activities using topic models. We find people who decrease their interest in politics are routinely exposed (face-to-face) to friends with little or no interest in politics. 1

Abstract. Recent years have seen unprecedented growth in the popularity of social network systems, with Facebook being an archetypical example. The access control paradigm behind the privacy preservation mechanism of Facebook is distinctly different from such existing access control paradigms as Discretionary Access Control, Role-Based Access Control, Capability Systems, and Trust Management Systems. This work takes a first step in deepening the understanding of this access control paradigm, by proposing an access control model that formalizes and generalizes the privacy preservation mechanism of Facebook. The model can be instantiated into a family of Facebook-style social network systems, each with a recognizably different access control mechanism, so that Facebook is but one instantiation of the model. We also demonstrate that the model can be instantiated to express policies that are not currently supported by Facebook but possess rich and natural social significance. This work thus delineates the design space of privacy preservation mechanisms for Facebook-style social network systems, and lays out a formal framework for policy analysis in these systems. 1

We investigate regrets associated with users ’ posts on a popular social networking site. Our findings are based on a series of interviews, user diaries, and online surveys involving 569 American Facebook users. Their regrets revolved around sensitive topics, content with strong sentiment, lies, and secrets. Our research reveals several possible causes of why users make posts that they later regret: (1) they want to be perceived in favorable ways, (2) they do not think about their reason for posting or the consequences of their posts, (3) they misjudge the culture and norms within their social circles, (4) they are in a “hot ” state of high emotion when posting, or under the influence of drugs or alcohol, (5) their postings are seen by an unintended audience, (6) they do not foresee how their posts could be perceived by people within their intended audience, and (7) they misunderstand or misuse the Facebook platform. Some reported incidents had serious repercussions, such as breaking up relationships or job losses. We discuss methodological considerations in studying negative experiences associated with social networking posts, as well as ways of helping users of social networking sites avoid such regrets.