Online Social Network (OSN) communities serve as different platforms for multiple users' interaction - people behaving diversely among distinctive communities - such as entertainment, global and local discussion communities. However, attribute identification among online discussion communities remain largely unexplored. In this paper, we describe and analyze the geo-location property of large-scale Facebook public pages (15M pages). We propose a framework utilizing the connectivity of the page-like graph to predict the missing geo-location information based on Breadth-First Search (BFS). Our method achieves a satisfyingly high accuracy (89 %) on identifying the state location attribute of unknown United States (US) pages. Our empirical results offer a better understanding of regional social analysis and target audience broadcasting.

Abstract Politicians' Web sites have been considered a medium for organizing, mobilizing, and agenda‐setting, but extant literature lacks a systematic approach to interpret the Web sites of senators—a new medium for political communication. This study classifies the role of political Web sites into relational (hyperlinking) and topical (shared‐issues) aspects. The two aspects may be viewed from a social embeddedness perspective and three facets, as K. Foot and S. Schneider ( 2002 ) suggested. This study employed network analysis, a set of research procedures for identifying structures in social systems, as the basis of the relations among the system's components rather than the attributes of individuals. Hyperlink and issue data were gathered from the United States Senate Web site and Yahoo. Major findings include: (a) The hyperlinks are more targeted at Democratic senators than at Republicans and are a means of communication for senators and users; (b) the issue network found from the Web is used for discussing public agendas and is more highly utilized by Republican senators; (c) the hyperlink and issue networks are correlated; and (d) social relationships and issue ecologies can be effectively detected by these two networks. The need for further research is addressed.

Abstract This article examines the impact of the Internet and the age distribution of research scholars on academic citation age with a mathematical model proposed by Barnett, Fink, and Debus (1989) and a revised model that incorporates information about the online environment and scholar age distribution. The modified model fits the data well, accounting for 99.6% of the variance for science citations and 99.8% for social science citations. The Internet's impact on the aging process of academic citations has been very small, accounting for only 0.1% for the social sciences and 0.8% for the sciences. Rather than resulting in the use of more recent citations, the Internet appears to have lengthened the average life of academic citations by 6 to 8 months. The aging of scholars seems to have a greater impact, accounting for 2.8% of the variance for the sciences and 0.9% for the social sciences. However, because the diffusion of the Internet and the aging of the professoriate are correlated over this time period, differentiating their effects is somewhat problematic.

Abstract This article argues that individual Web sites form hyperlink–affiliations with others for the purpose of strengthening their individual trust, expertness, and safety. It describes the hyperlink–affiliation network structure of Korea's top 152 Web sites. The data were obtained from their Web sites for October 2000. The results indicate that financial Web sites, such as credit card and stock Web sites, occupy the most central position in the network. A cluster analysis reveals that the structure of the hyperlink–affiliation network is influenced by the financial Web sites with which others are affiliated. These findings are discussed from the perspective of Web site credibility.

This study examines the relationship between the international telephone network and the process of democratization. It attempts to answer two research questions: (1) Who are the core, semiperiphery, periphery countries in the international telephone network? (2) What is the relationship between a country's network position and its level of democracy? The results indicate that various network indicators (e.g., system density, centrality, connectedness, and integrativeness) are consistent over time. Network analysis identified one large group in the global telephone network. Further, the results are consistent with the main argument of world system theory that a country's position in the network affects its political development and its patterns of interaction. Telecommunication also plays a paradoxical role in the development of democracy. On the one hand, it facilitates interaction among different segments of people and enables popular participation. On the other hand, it generates electronic colonialism and exacerbates the gap between the core and the periphery countries. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

This article examines how individuals at different stages in the innovation-decision process perceive computer-assisted legal research systems (CALR). Following Barnett's (“An associational model for the diffusion of complex innovations.” Presented at the International Communication Association, Chicago, IL; 1978 [1]) associational model for the diffusion of complex innovations, a survey is described which applied metric multidimensional scaling to measure the cognitive structure of potential adopters toward a domain of concepts related to CALR. The study demonstrates the utility of this approach for examining the diffusion process. The results suggest that there are clear distinctions in the structures of individuals' associations at different stages in the diffusion process. First, people at later stages in the process identify more closely with the various online systems. Second, adopters more closely associate the attributes which describe the advantages of computer-based systems with the systems. Third, the variance in the population's perceptions of the relationship among the concepts decreases. Implications of the results are discussed. © 1988 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.