Davide Gazzè

Online Social Media (OSM) platforms, such as Facebook or Twitter, are part of everyday life as powerful communication tools. They let users communicate anywhere anytime, and improve their own public image. For this reason, OSM are becoming more and more popular. Social Media data may play a crucial role in various decision-making processes. In this setting, research topics connected to monitoring of Social Media data are becoming increasingly important. The presented work is grounded on direct… Visualizza altro

Online Social Media (OSM) platforms, such as Facebook or Twitter, are part of everyday life as powerful communication tools. They let users communicate anywhere anytime, and improve their own public image. For this reason, OSM are becoming more and more popular. Social Media data may play a crucial role in various decision-making processes. In this setting, research topics connected to monitoring of Social Media data are becoming increasingly important. The presented work is grounded on direct extensive experiences in data collection from different Social Media sources, and on the different methodologies applied in different reference domains (namely Online Reputation, Social Media Intelligence, and Opinion Mining in tourism). The crawlers developed for these domains provide valuable suggestions to elicit diverse requirements. After lessons learned in such fields, a general architecture for data capture from Social Media sources has been devised, and the interfaces of the composing modules have been defined. The resulting API can be exploited for an orderly re-engineering of crawling tools in the reference domains, thus implementing specific versions of the generic architecture. Meno dettagli

This study investigates the use of social networks as a scientific tool for gathering medical data from young subjects while promoting healthier habits. Our first hypothesis is that social networks can facilitate epidemiological studies, reducing time and cost. The second question is whether social networks can enable the collection of data from young and healthy subjects who are otherwise beyond the reach of conventional social health polls. A Facebook application was created to collect data… Visualizza altro

This study investigates the use of social networks as a scientific tool for gathering medical data from young subjects while promoting healthier habits. Our first hypothesis is that social networks can facilitate epidemiological studies, reducing time and cost. The second question is whether social networks can enable the collection of data from young and healthy subjects who are otherwise beyond the reach of conventional social health polls. A Facebook application was created to collect data concerning adherence to the Mediterranean diet, considering the significant risk of cardiovascular and neurological degenerative diseases in subjects with poor adherence to a healthy diet. More than 1400 users were recruited in a short time without any promotional action. Collected data indicate that adherence to the Mediterranean diet is in general greater in older users vs young (p <0.01) and Italian vs Other Countries (mainly participants from the US) (p <0.03), while no statistical differences were found concerning gender. Results show that the proposed approach offers advantages in terms of reduced cost, faster data gathering and processing, and improved efficiency compared to a form-based epidemiology campaign. However, the initial network may influence the sample constitution in age and geographical location, especially if the spread does not become viral and autonomous. Based on the case study, we provide designers of Facebook apps with some simple guideline suggestions aimed at maximizing the heterogeneity of the sample, in order to collect significant data. The proposed scenario, suitable for collecting health data, can easily be extended to other fields. Meno dettagli

In this paper we illustrate the Geo Data Annotator (GDA), a framework which helps a user to build a ground-truth dataset, starting from two separate geographical datasets.
GDA exploits two kinds of indices to ease the task of manual annotation: geographical-based and string-based. GDA provides also a mechanism to evaluate the quality of the built ground-truth dataset. This is achieved through a collaborative platform, which allows many users to work to the same project. The quality… Visualizza altro

In this paper we illustrate the Geo Data Annotator (GDA), a framework which helps a user to build a ground-truth dataset, starting from two separate geographical datasets.
GDA exploits two kinds of indices to ease the task of manual annotation: geographical-based and string-based. GDA provides also a mechanism to evaluate the quality of the built ground-truth dataset. This is achieved through a collaborative platform, which allows many users to work to the same project. The quality evaluation is based on annotator
agreement, which exploits the Fleiss’ kappa statistic. Meno dettagli

Organised crime uses information technology systems to communicate, work or expand its influence. The EU FP7 Security Research Project CAPER (Collaborative information, Acquisition, Processing, Exploitation and Reporting for the prevention of organised crime), created in cooperation with European Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs), aims to build a common collaborative and information sharing platform for the detection and prevention of organised crime, which exploits Open Source Intelligence… Visualizza altro

Organised crime uses information technology systems to communicate, work or expand its influence. The EU FP7 Security Research Project CAPER (Collaborative information, Acquisition, Processing, Exploitation and Reporting for the prevention of organised crime), created in cooperation with European Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs), aims to build a common collaborative and information sharing platform for the detection and prevention of organised crime, which exploits Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). LEAs are becoming more inclined to using OSINT tools, and particularly tools able to manage Online Social Networks (OSNs) data. This paper presents the CAPER Facebook crawling and analysis subsystem. Heuristic algorithms have been implemented in order to extract specific properties of Facebook's social graph, in particular user interactions. To support analysis tasks specifically, extensive effort has been spent on the analysis of textual user generated content and on the recognition of named-entities, in particular person names, locations and organisations. Relationships between users and entities mentioned in posts and in related comments are created and merged into the users networks extracted from the social graph. All entity relationships are finally visualized in user-friendly network graphs. Meno dettagli

Tour-pedia is a Web application which shows the sentiment of users about touristic locations in some of the most important cities and regions in Europe. It is implemented within the OpeNER project, which aims to provide a pipeline for processing natural language. More specifically, Tour-pedia, exploits the OpeNER pipeline to analyse users’ reviews on places. All reviews are extracted from social media. Once analysed, each review is associated to a rate, which ranges from 0 to 100. The sentiment… Visualizza altro

Tour-pedia is a Web application which shows the sentiment of users about touristic locations in some of the most important cities and regions in Europe. It is implemented within the OpeNER project, which aims to provide a pipeline for processing natural language. More specifically, Tour-pedia, exploits the OpeNER pipeline to analyse users’ reviews on places. All reviews are extracted from social media. Once analysed, each review is associated to a rate, which ranges from 0 to 100. The sentiment of each place is calculated as a function of all the reviews sentiment on that place. As a result, Tour-pedia shows all the places and their users sentiments on a map. Meno dettagli

In this paper we illustrate Tourpedia, which would be the DBpedia of tourism. Tourpedia contains more than half a million places, divided in four categories: accommodations, restaurants, points of interests and attractions. They are related to eight locations: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Dubai, London, Paris, Rome and Tuscany, but new locations are continuously added. Information about places were extracted from four social media: Facebook, Foursquare, GooglePlaces and Booking
and were… Visualizza altro

In this paper we illustrate Tourpedia, which would be the DBpedia of tourism. Tourpedia contains more than half a million places, divided in four categories: accommodations, restaurants, points of interests and attractions. They are related to eight locations: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Dubai, London, Paris, Rome and Tuscany, but new locations are continuously added. Information about places were extracted from four social media: Facebook, Foursquare, GooglePlaces and Booking
and were integrated in order to build a unique catalogue. Tourpedia provides also a Web API and a SPARQL endpoint to access data. Meno dettagli

Durante la campagna elettorale che ha portato al voto del 24-25 febbraio 2013 si è spesso detto che la rete è stata protagonista: «Boom di Twitter e Facebook. Due messaggi ogni secondo. Così i politici diventano social» (La Repubblica, 6 febbraio); «Twitter e Facebook sempre più centrali» (Il Messaggero, 11 febbraio); «le prime elezioni virtuali» (repubblica.it, 10 febbraio). Addirittura, si è assegnata ai social media una capacità predittiva rispetto all’esito che sarebbe uscito dalle urne… Visualizza altro

Durante la campagna elettorale che ha portato al voto del 24-25 febbraio 2013 si è spesso detto che la rete è stata protagonista: «Boom di Twitter e Facebook. Due messaggi ogni secondo. Così i politici diventano social» (La Repubblica, 6 febbraio); «Twitter e Facebook sempre più centrali» (Il Messaggero, 11 febbraio); «le prime elezioni virtuali» (repubblica.it, 10 febbraio). Addirittura, si è assegnata ai social media una capacità predittiva rispetto all’esito che sarebbe uscito dalle urne tanto che anche a poglio
ultimato c’è stato chi ha sostenuto che «bastava tenere d’occhio i social network» (Il Fatto Quotidiano, 28 febbraio) per conoscere in anticipo cosa sarebbe accaduto Meno dettagli

Nowadays social media trends are becoming very important to describe the variation of popularity, activity and influence of an entity. In this paper we define an abstract model which can be used on different social media to compare metrics with the same meaning. In particular we describe three classes of metrics: popularity, activity and influence. We also present SocialTrends, a web application (http://www.social-trends.it/) which collects, elaborates and visualizes social media data. Finally,… Visualizza altro

Nowadays social media trends are becoming very important to describe the variation of popularity, activity and influence of an entity. In this paper we define an abstract model which can be used on different social media to compare metrics with the same meaning. In particular we describe three classes of metrics: popularity, activity and influence. We also present SocialTrends, a web application (http://www.social-trends.it/) which collects, elaborates and visualizes social media data. Finally, we describe one experiment we have done to test SocialTrends. Meno dettagli

In recent years the adoption of systems to automatically manage information assets in networked, collaborative ways has become vital for enterprises. In this work we focus on collaborative document management systems, where actual document development relies on accessing structured data in remote repositories. Forms within documents must be filled in with proper data items: An automated support to gather the required remote data may substantially improve the overall document management process.… Visualizza altro

In recent years the adoption of systems to automatically manage information assets in networked, collaborative ways has become vital for enterprises. In this work we focus on collaborative document management systems, where actual document development relies on accessing structured data in remote repositories. Forms within documents must be filled in with proper data items: An automated support to gather the required remote data may substantially improve the overall document management process. The Web Service technology is of fundamental help in this setting, because it lets remote data be exposed to potential clients according to standard interfaces. On the other hand, document management systems must be modified to provide this new kind of data access. This paper introduces a novel approach to support remote data integration in documents handled by Content Management Systems. According to the reported experience, such a data integration can be regarded as an enabling feature for a better exploitation of document workflow systems. Meno dettagli

In this demo we show an open source software (SW) program designed to facilitate the execution of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) intervention with low-functioning autistic children. The SW is based on Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) and Discrete Trial Training (DTT). The SW automatically records data extractable from the session (times, success/error, etc.), while the tutor inserts subjective data such as type and level of prompt provided to a child, along with comments. The… Visualizza altro

In this demo we show an open source software (SW) program designed to facilitate the execution of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) intervention with low-functioning autistic children. The SW is based on Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) and Discrete Trial Training (DTT). The SW automatically records data extractable from the session (times, success/error, etc.), while the tutor inserts subjective data such as type and level of prompt provided to a child, along with comments. The SW adapts the trial to the child’s abilities (receptive/verbal) to make it accessible (comprehensible and operable). To offer the child a simple and accessible interaction environment, the tutor and child user interfaces are kept separate and offered on mobile devices. Using a laptop, the tutor sets the exercise that appears on the child's tablet. Synchronization between devices offers the tutor a real-time summary of actions performed by child, freeing up his/her cognitive resources needed to memorize this information and possibly favoring the decision-making process for the ABA intervention. Meno dettagli

Processing documents is a critical and crucial aspect in an enterprise environment. The management of documents involves several people and many times becomes a long and wasting-time process. Many systems of document workflow have been proposed but usually they are too rigid and complex. Therefore we have developed a document workflow engine based on the email paradigm. When a user wants to make an order, a request of authorization and, in general, any kind of procedure that involve a document,… Visualizza altro

Processing documents is a critical and crucial aspect in an enterprise environment. The management of documents involves several people and many times becomes a long and wasting-time process. Many systems of document workflow have been proposed but usually they are too rigid and complex. Therefore we have developed a document workflow engine based on the email paradigm. When a user wants to make an order, a request of authorization and, in general, any kind of procedure that involve a document, starts her/his request by filling in a form and sending it by attaching it to an email. To this purpose the user has to use our web application that appears as a normal webmail client. Our solution overcomes the actual limitation in the use of document workflow software, especially for what concern the user experience; with our system there is no need, for users, to learn the functioning of a new framework. In addition, users with different roles have different customized view of the document. According with the roles of the users, we trained the system to suggest to the user, at each step, a possible receiver of the email. Currently this feature is based on the fact that the system knows in advance the flow associated with different type of documents. As improvement, we will perform a statistical analysis of interactions between senders and receivers. This analysis will be used to improve the suggestion mechanism: the system will learn the most frequent interactions for each user, depending on the history of previous flow and the document involved. Exploiting these information, the suggestion mechanism will advise to the user the possible receiver of the document. Meno dettagli

Online Social Networks (OSNs) are more and more establishing as one of the key means to create and enforce social relationships between individuals. While substantial results have been obtained in the
anthropology literature describing the properties of human social networks (built “outside” the OSN world), a clear understanding of the properties of social networks built using OSNs is still to be achieved. In this paper we provide a contribution towards this goal, by starting… Visualizza altro

Online Social Networks (OSNs) are more and more establishing as one of the key means to create and enforce social relationships between individuals. While substantial results have been obtained in the
anthropology literature describing the properties of human social networks (built “outside” the OSN world), a clear understanding of the properties of social networks built using OSNs is still to be achieved. In this paper we provide a contribution towards this goal, by starting characterizing
ego networks formed inside Facebook through the analysis of data obtained from a measurement campaign. Ego networks capture all the social relationships (links) between an ego and all the other people with whom the ego has a social tie. Ego networks are one of the key social structure that have been studied in the anthropology literature, and is thus a reference objective for our work. In this paper we analyze a number of quantitative variables that can be collected on Facebook, which
can be used to describe the properties of the social links in ego networks.
We also analyze the correlation between these variables and the strength of the social ties, as explicitly ranked by the monitored Facebook users.
Our results show that there is an interesting similarity between the properties observed by anthropologists in human social networks, and those of Facebook social networks. Moreover, we found a noticeable correlation between most of the measured variables and the tie strengths, suggesting the possibility of automatically inferring the latter from measurable Facebook variables. Meno dettagli

Social network sites (SNSs) are increasingly attracting the attention of academic and industry re-searchers intrigued by their affordance and reach. Most website, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on, connect people that don't know each other based on shared interests, political views, photos, videos and in general important part of life. Some sites cater to diverse audiences, while others attract people based on common language or shared racial, sexual, religious, or nationali-ty-based… Visualizza altro

Social network sites (SNSs) are increasingly attracting the attention of academic and industry re-searchers intrigued by their affordance and reach. Most website, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on, connect people that don't know each other based on shared interests, political views, photos, videos and in general important part of life. Some sites cater to diverse audiences, while others attract people based on common language or shared racial, sexual, religious, or nationali-ty-based identities. Social networking websites could be harnessed for immense benefit to the scientific sector. A scientific social network allows scientists to share ideas, details of their cur-rent research and freely distribute their results. It would reduce wasteful scientific redundancy, for instance, by preventing scientists from doing experiments others have done before them, and it would also enable cooperation between groups across the world. In this Technical Report we present our SNS platform called CNR@wOrK and discuss about its developments and future improvements. Meno dettagli

Tourpedia (http://tour-pedia.org) is an open initiative which contains a linked dataset of tourism places, i.e. accommodations, attractions, points of interest (POIs) and restaurants. Tourpedia extracts and integrates information about places from four different social social media: Facebook, Foursquare, Google Places and Booking.com. The resulting knowledge base currently consists of more than 6M RDF triples and describes almost 500.000 places, each of which is identified by a globally unique… Visualizza altro

Tourpedia (http://tour-pedia.org) is an open initiative which contains a linked dataset of tourism places, i.e. accommodations, attractions, points of interest (POIs) and restaurants. Tourpedia extracts and integrates information about places from four different social social media: Facebook, Foursquare, Google Places and Booking.com. The resulting knowledge base currently consists of more than 6M RDF triples and describes almost 500.000 places, each of which is identified by a globally unique identifier, which can be dereferenced over the Web into a RDF description. This paper
gives an overview of the Tourpedia knowledge base and illustrates how new relations are discovered among places through Named Entity Recognition (NER) tools. Meno dettagli