The Institute for Information Sciences hosts monthly seminars in which our faculty present their current research. The purpose of these seminars is to stimulate the flow of ideas, foster professional development, and seek new integrations to enhance faculty collaboration. All seminars are held in the Lenke Family Innovation Lab in Martin Hall.

Our next seminar is:

Date: February 19th
Time: 12pm – 1pm
Title: Modeling Social Influence in Mobile Messaging Apps
Faculty Lead: Songmei Yu

Abstract:
Social influence is the behavioral change of a person because of the perceived relationship with other people, organizations, and society in general. With the exponential growth of online social network services especially mobile messaging apps, users around the world are logging in to messaging apps to not only chat with friends but also to connect with brands, browse merchandise, and watch content. Mobile chat apps boast a number of distinct characteristics that make their audiences particularly appealing to businesses and marketers, including their size, retention and usage rates, and user demographics. The combined user base of the top four chat apps is larger than the combined user base of the top four social networks. Therefore, it makes great sense to analyze user behavior and social influence in mobile messaging apps. In this paper, we focus on computational aspects of measuring the social influence of groups formed in mobile messaging apps. We describe the special features of mobile messaging apps and present challenges. We address the challenges by proposing a temporal weighted data model to measure the group influence in messaging apps by considering their special features, with implementation and evaluation in the end.

Mission:
The Institute of Information Sciences is a purpose-driven learning community of students, faculty, and staff committed to creating an academic eco-system where timeless values are shared, new ideas are explored, and intellectual risks are taken in disciplines involving the processing, analyzing, synthesizing, and sharing of complex information for the betterment of humanity, in the spirit of Franciscan values.

Contact Information:

Shane Bradley
Operations Manager
Email: bradleys@felician.edu
Phone: 201. 559-6002