Social Networks

Nice article (in Spanish) in Yorokobu magazine about the use of Twitter in science, highlighting our work on the use of social media for rapid assessment of natural disaster management El romance entre Twitter y la ciencia «Twitter y las otras redes sociales están entre los más grandes archivos de actividad humana existentes y, al contrario que con las encuestas, ahora tenemos la posibilidad de analizar millones de mensajes, opiniones e interacciones de personas en diferentes contextos como la política, economía o el ocio», explica el matemático Esteban Moro, investigador en la Carlos III de Madrid. ...

From the “Small World Experiment” to the “Red Balloon Challenge,” and beyond We live in a small world, right? But the cost and fragility of navigating it could harm any potential strategy to leverage the power of social networks. Read this fascinating story of the research, experiments, and failures in the quest for using social networks to search information/people: [Excerpt of the article] Our ability to search social networks for people and information is fundamental to our success. ...

Authors:Talayeh Aledavood , Eduardo López, Sam G. B. Roberts, Felix Reed-Tsochas, Esteban Moro, Robin I. M. Dunbar, Jari Saramäki Journal: PLoS ONE 10(9), e0138098 (2015) LINK Abstract: Circadian rhythms are known to be important drivers of human activity and the recent availability of electronic records of human behaviour has provided fine-grained data of temporal patterns of activity on a large scale. Further, questionnaire studies have identified important individual differences in circadian rhythms, with people broadly categorised into morning-like or evening-like individuals. ...

Authors:Alejandro Llorente, Manuel García-Herránz, Manuel Cebrián and Esteban Moro Journal: PLoS ONE 10(5): e0128692 (2014) LINK Summary: Publicly available social media data can be used to quantify deviations from typical patterns of behavior and uncover how these deviations signal the socio-economical status of regions. Using data from geolocalized Twitter messages, we find that unemployment is correlated with technology adoption, daily activity, diversity in mobility patterns and correctness in communication style. These behavioral metrics serve to build simple, interpretable, and cost-effective socio-economical predictors from these novel digital datasets. ...

Authors:Jari Saramaki, Esteban Moro Journal: Eur. Phys. J. B (2015) 88: 164 LINK | **arXiv Abstract: Big Data on electronic records of social interactions allow approaching human behaviour and sociality from a quantitative point of view with unforeseen statistical power. Mobile telephone Call Detail Records (CDRs), automatically collected by telecom operators for billing purposes, have proven especially fruitful for understanding one-to-one communication patterns as well as the dynamics of social networks that are reflected in such patterns. ...

Authors: Esteban Moro Book: Cotarelo, R. & Olmeda, J.A. (Comps.) (forthcoming). La democracia del siglo XXI. Política, medios de comunicación, internet y redes sociales. Actas de las II Jornadas españolas de ciberpolítica, 28 de mayo de 2013. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales. [pdf] Abstract: En los últimos años hemos asistido a un incremento notable de eventos de carácter político y/o social que han sido promovidos (cuando no originados) a través de medios de comunicación electrónicos. ...