SIS Dissertation Defense: Exploring Offline Friendships on the Social Information Network

About The Talk

The rapid increase in online social networking services over the last decade has presented an unprecedented opportunity to observe users’ behaviour both on a societal and individual level. The insight gained from analysing such data can help foster a deeper understanding of social media users and the flow of information, while also offering valuable business applications. User relationships are among the most studied aspects of online behaviour. These relationships are not homogeneous. Past research has shown that people use social networks to both socialize and source information. Hence, different types of links -- used to socialize, gain information, or both -- are formed among users. While much research has focused on how users are connected online, it is crucial to explore how linkages online interact with those present in offline social networks. Questions such as, "What would speed up the diffusion of a piece of information?" can be better answered from an integrated offline-online perspective. My dissertation explores this issue in three main studies. I especially focus on social networks, and use Twitter as a case study. In the first study, I explore and compare network characteristics on Twitter among offline friends and online friends. In the second study, I explore information diffusion in the same setting. In the last study, I investigate whether we can use the measurement of tie strength among friends in the offline world as a substitutes for, or a complement to the measurement of tie strength among friends on Twitter.

Speaker Biography

Felicia NATALI is a PhD candidate under the Doctoral Programme in Data Science & Engineering at Singapore Management University. She works under the guidance of Associate Professor Feida Zhu. She is co-supervised by Professor Ee-peng Lim. She also received a lot of guidance from Professor Robert J. Kauffman. Her research interests involve offline-to-online social behaviour, social network structures, information dissemination on the online social networks, and applied network analysis for social science and business. From 2016 to 2017, she was a visiting Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University. She obtained her Bachelor of Science in Information Systems from SMU in 2011.