Underresourced or socially excluded communities in Manchester, England demonstrate active use of information technologies despite continuing digital inequalities.A systematic look at 31 grassroots community groups, at...Underresourced or socially excluded communities in Manchester, England demonstrate active use of information technologies despite continuing digital inequalities.A systematic look at 31 grassroots community groups, at how they use IT and who helps them, reveals possible mechanisms towards a more inclusive network society. Social network and social capital theories help make apparent how people are self-organizing with respect to information technology in ways that reach across ethnicity, class, gender, and generations for skilled help, yet stay close to their strong-tie, bonding-social-capital networks, relying largely on people in their own communities. Based on 25 measures of IT use, the groups fall into three progressively more extensive categories: Downloaders(using computers and the Internet, particularly e-mails), uploaders(maintaining a group web presence), and cyberorganizers(helping others to become uploaders or downloaders). These categories align with each individual group's purpose.展开更多
Blogs have permeated into our daily lives at a fast speed, and various kinds of blog spaces have attracted our attention. However, little effort has been made on studying the users' motivation to participate in bl...Blogs have permeated into our daily lives at a fast speed, and various kinds of blog spaces have attracted our attention. However, little effort has been made on studying the users' motivation to participate in blog activities. This paper aims to construct a theoretical model about the blog adoption based on technology acceptance model(TAM theory), social capital theory and social exchange theory, and put forward 18 related hypotheses. Then the survey method is adopted to analyze the data from 208 questionnaires using the SPSS and LISREL tools, and to examine the theoretical model and hypotheses. Finally, the paper makes a discussion from five aspects due to the results of data analysis, including individual driving factors, group driving factors, community driving factors, technology acceptance factors and moderating variables. The results show that curiosity/enjoyment, user's experience, social interaction and social identification will greatly affect users' motivation to accept a blog; meanwhile, perceived ease of use, exchange cost and trust will partially influence users' intention to participate in blog activities. The results also suggest that age and education degrees have significant moderating effects on users' acceptance and updating of blogs.展开更多
Cellular networks are overloaded due to the mobile traffic surge,and mobile social networks(MSNets) can be leveraged for traffic offloading.In this paper,we study the issue of choosing seed users for maximizing the mo...Cellular networks are overloaded due to the mobile traffic surge,and mobile social networks(MSNets) can be leveraged for traffic offloading.In this paper,we study the issue of choosing seed users for maximizing the mobile traffic offloaded from cellular networks.We introduce a gossip-style social cascade(GSC) model to model the epidemic-like information diffusion process in MSNets.For static-case and mobile-case networks,we establish an equivalent view and a temporal mapping of the information diffusion process,respectively.We further prove the submodularity in the information diffusion and propose a greedy algorithm to choose the seed users for traffic offloading,yielding a sub-optimal solution to the NP-hard traffic offloading maximization(TOM) problem.Experiments are carried out to study the offloading performance,illustrating that the greedy algorithm significantly outperforms the heuristic and random algorithms,and user mobility can help further reduce cellular load.展开更多
基金supported by the Manchester Digital Development Agency,the University of Manchester Ahmed Iqbal Race Relations Resource Center,the University of Michigan Non-Profit and Public Management Center and the Alliance for Community Technology
文摘Underresourced or socially excluded communities in Manchester, England demonstrate active use of information technologies despite continuing digital inequalities.A systematic look at 31 grassroots community groups, at how they use IT and who helps them, reveals possible mechanisms towards a more inclusive network society. Social network and social capital theories help make apparent how people are self-organizing with respect to information technology in ways that reach across ethnicity, class, gender, and generations for skilled help, yet stay close to their strong-tie, bonding-social-capital networks, relying largely on people in their own communities. Based on 25 measures of IT use, the groups fall into three progressively more extensive categories: Downloaders(using computers and the Internet, particularly e-mails), uploaders(maintaining a group web presence), and cyberorganizers(helping others to become uploaders or downloaders). These categories align with each individual group's purpose.
文摘Blogs have permeated into our daily lives at a fast speed, and various kinds of blog spaces have attracted our attention. However, little effort has been made on studying the users' motivation to participate in blog activities. This paper aims to construct a theoretical model about the blog adoption based on technology acceptance model(TAM theory), social capital theory and social exchange theory, and put forward 18 related hypotheses. Then the survey method is adopted to analyze the data from 208 questionnaires using the SPSS and LISREL tools, and to examine the theoretical model and hypotheses. Finally, the paper makes a discussion from five aspects due to the results of data analysis, including individual driving factors, group driving factors, community driving factors, technology acceptance factors and moderating variables. The results show that curiosity/enjoyment, user's experience, social interaction and social identification will greatly affect users' motivation to accept a blog; meanwhile, perceived ease of use, exchange cost and trust will partially influence users' intention to participate in blog activities. The results also suggest that age and education degrees have significant moderating effects on users' acceptance and updating of blogs.
基金supported by the National Basic Research Program of China(973 Program) through grant 2012CB316004the Doctoral Program of Higher Education(SRFDP)+1 种基金Research Grants Council Earmarked Research Grants(RGC ERG) Joint Research Scheme through Specialized Research Fund 20133402140001National Natural Science Foundation of China through grant 61379003
文摘Cellular networks are overloaded due to the mobile traffic surge,and mobile social networks(MSNets) can be leveraged for traffic offloading.In this paper,we study the issue of choosing seed users for maximizing the mobile traffic offloaded from cellular networks.We introduce a gossip-style social cascade(GSC) model to model the epidemic-like information diffusion process in MSNets.For static-case and mobile-case networks,we establish an equivalent view and a temporal mapping of the information diffusion process,respectively.We further prove the submodularity in the information diffusion and propose a greedy algorithm to choose the seed users for traffic offloading,yielding a sub-optimal solution to the NP-hard traffic offloading maximization(TOM) problem.Experiments are carried out to study the offloading performance,illustrating that the greedy algorithm significantly outperforms the heuristic and random algorithms,and user mobility can help further reduce cellular load.
