Social Networks, Large Networks and their Applications

Recently, social networks have grown rapidly in size and popularity. The global internet population has witnessed a popular expansion to reach billions of users around the world. For connected users, social networks provide a most suitable space for sharing data, interacting with other users and forming communities with common interests. Social networks have important impacts on today’s society not only in terms of structure and dynamics, but also regarding scientific and technological aspects.

Social networks raise new research challenges due to the numerous emerging needs and applications. The focus of this track is on emerging and novel concepts, architectures and methodologies for social and more generally large networks analysis, tools and applications, including issues related to complex graphs, semantics, big data, and security.

The topics of interest of the track include, but are not limited to:

Social Network Analysis – methods, algorithms, processes

  • Social graph processing / manipulation
  • Usage / implementation of Big Data algorithms
  • Avoiding fragmentation of the social graph
    • Open cross-platform interactions
    • Usage of Identity algorithms (OAuth, openID, etc.)
    • Usage of Identity APIs
  • Dynamics and evolution patterns of social networks, trend prediction
  • Information diffusion in Social Networks

Social analytic tools

  • Approaches based on Semantic Web Technologies
  • Ontologies for managing social networks
  • Social networks and cultural information
  • Social Network Analysis of Terrorist Networks
  • Cyber surveillance for unlawful activities for critical infrastructure protection
  • Participatory surveillance

Social Networks and Security

  • Privacy-preserving Social network Analysis
  • Social Networks Analysis for security applications
  • Social network-based security measures and controls
  • Social Networks Analysis for identifying and assessing cyber risks
  • Security by means of Social Networks Analysis
  • Information security measures and controls, to help in identifying and assessing cyber risks

Architectures and methods for social network management

  • Social media search and management in large scale environments
  • Searching blogs, tweets, and other social media
  • Frameworks and Methodologies for large scale Collaboration
  • Collective Awareness Platforms for Social (CAPS) and business innovation
  • Communities discovery and analysis in large scale online and offline social networks
  • Traffic prediction for dimensioning media applications

User-centric applications

  • Exploiting user mobility and geolocation
  • Ontology-based user profiling
  • Social and Ethical Issues in a Networked World
  • Human-powered community question answering and expert finding
  • Social, mobile, pervasive content sharing and live media distribution
  • Spam, opinions and adversarial interactions in social media
  • Personalization for social interaction
  • Use of Social Networks for business and marketing
  • Immersive Social Networks
  • Social businesses, social CRM
  • Social gaming

Large networks

  • Internet of People
  • Internet of Things
  • Networks of networks

Track Chair

Ana Roxin, IEM Dept., University of Burgundy, France
Alessandro Provetti, MIFT Dept., University of Messina, Italy
Ernesto Damiani, University of Milan, Italy