This book presents the state-of-the-art in various aspects of analysis and mining of online social networks. Within the broader context of online social networks, it focuses on important and upcoming topics of social network analysis and mining such as the latest in sentiment trends research and a variety of techniques for community detection and analysis. The book collects chapters that are expanded versions of the best papers presented at the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM’2015), which was held in Paris, France in August 2015. All papers have been peer reviewed and checked carefully for overlap with the literature. The book will appeal to students and researchers in social network analysis/mining and machine learning.

This work constitutes the proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Advances in Social Network and Analysis, held in Las Vegas, NV, USA in August 2008.

This book concentrates on mining networks, a subfield within data science. Data science uses scientific and computational tools to extract valuable knowledge from large data sets. Once data is processed and cleaned, it is analyzed and presented to support decision-making processes. Data science and machine learning tools have become widely used in companies of all sizes. Networks are often large-scale, decentralized, and evolve dynamically over time. Mining complex networks aim to understand the principles governing the organization and the behavior of such networks is crucial for a broad range of fields of study. Here are a few selected typical applications of mining networks: Community detection (which users on some social media platforms are close friends). Link prediction (who is likely to connect to whom on such platforms). Node attribute prediction (what advertisement should be shown to a given user of a particular platform to match their interests). Influential node detection (which social media users would be the best ambassadors of a specific product). This textbook is suitable for an upper-year undergraduate course or a graduate course in programs such as data science, mathematics, computer science, business, engineering, physics, statistics, and social science. This book can be successfully used by all enthusiasts of data science at various levels of sophistication to expand their knowledge or consider changing their career path. Jupiter notebooks (in Python and Julia) accompany the book and can be accessed on https://www.ryerson.ca/mining-complex-networks/. These not only contain all the experiments presented in the book, but also include additional material. Bogumił Kamiński is the Chairman of the Scientific Council for the Discipline of Economics and Finance at SGH Warsaw School of Economics. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Data Science Laboratory at Ryerson University. Bogumił is an expert in applications of mathematical modeling to solving complex real-life problems. He is also a substantial open-source contributor to the development of the Julia language and its package ecosystem. Paweł Prałat is a Professor of Mathematics in Ryerson University, whose main research interests are in random graph theory, especially in modeling and mining complex networks. He is the Director of Fields-CQAM Lab on Computational Methods in Industrial Mathematics in The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences and has pursued collaborations with various industry partners as well as the Government of Canada. He has written over 170 papers and three books with 130 plus collaborators. François Théberge holds a B.Sc. degree in applied mathematics from the University of Ottawa, a M.Sc. in telecommunications from INRS and a PhD in electrical engineering from McGill University. He has been employed by the Government of Canada since 1996 where he was involved in the creation of the data science team as well as the research group now known as the Tutte Institute for Mathematics and Computing. He also holds an adjunct professorial position in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Ottawa. His current interests include relational-data mining and deep learning.

This edited book provides techniques which address various aspects of big data collection and analysis from social media platforms and beyond. It covers efficient compression of large networks, link prediction in hashtag graphs, visual exploration of social media data, identifying motifs in multivariate data, social media surveillance to enhance search and rescue missions, recommenders for collaborative filtering and safe travel plans to high risk destinations, analysis of cyber influence campaigns on YouTube, impact of location on business rating, bibliographical and co-authorship network analysis, and blog data analytics. All these trending topics form a major part of the state of the art in social media and big data analytics. Thus, this edited book may be considered as a valuable source for readers interested in grasping some of the most recent advancements in this high trending domain.

What does the Web look like? How can we find patterns, communities, outliers, in a social network? Which are the most central nodes in a network? These are the questions that motivate this work. Networks and graphs appear in many diverse settings, for example in social networks, computer-communication networks (intrusion detection, traffic management), protein-protein interaction networks in biology, document-text bipartite graphs in text retrieval, person-account graphs in financial fraud detection, and others. In this work, first we list several surprising patterns that real graphs tend to follow. Then we give a detailed list of generators that try to mirror these patterns. Generators are important, because they can help with "what if" scenarios, extrapolations, and anonymization. Then we provide a list of powerful tools for graph analysis, and specifically spectral methods (Singular Value Decomposition (SVD)), tensors, and case studies like the famous "pageRank" algorithm and the "HITS" algorithm for ranking web search results. Finally, we conclude with a survey of tools and observations from related fields like sociology, which provide complementary viewpoints. Table of Contents: Introduction / Patterns in Static Graphs / Patterns in Evolving Graphs / Patterns in Weighted Graphs / Discussion: The Structure of Specific Graphs / Discussion: Power Laws and Deviations / Summary of Patterns / Graph Generators / Preferential Attachment and Variants / Incorporating Geographical Information / The RMat / Graph Generation by Kronecker Multiplication / Summary and Practitioner's Guide / SVD, Random Walks, and Tensors / Tensors / Community Detection / Influence/Virus Propagation and Immunization / Case Studies / Social Networks / Other Related Work / Conclusions

This book addresses the challenges of social network and social media analysis in terms of prediction and inference. The chapters collected here tackle these issues by proposing new analysis methods and by examining mining methods for the vast amount of social content produced. Social Networks (SNs) have become an integral part of our lives; they are used for leisure, business, government, medical, educational purposes and have attracted billions of users. The challenges that stem from this wide adoption of SNs are vast. These include generating realistic social network topologies, awareness of user activities, topic and trend generation, estimation of user attributes from their social content, and behavior detection. This text has applications to widely used platforms such as Twitter and Facebook and appeals to students, researchers, and professionals in the field.

Computational Intelligence (CI) has emerged as a novel and highly diversified paradigm supporting the design, analysis and deployment of intelligent systems. This book presents a careful selection of the field that very well reflects the breadth of the discipline. It covers a range of highly relevant and practical design principles governing the development of intelligent systems in data mining, robotics, bioinformatics, and intelligent tutoring systems. The lucid presentations, coherent organization, breadth and the authoritative coverage of the area make the book highly attractive for everybody interested in the design and analysis of intelligent systems.

Increasingly, human beings are sensors engaging directly with the mobile Internet. Individuals can now share real-time experiences at an unprecedented scale. Social Sensing: Building Reliable Systems on Unreliable Data looks at recent advances in the emerging field of social sensing, emphasizing the key problem faced by application designers: how to extract reliable information from data collected from largely unknown and possibly unreliable sources. The book explains how a myriad of societal applications can be derived from this massive amount of data collected and shared by average individuals. The title offers theoretical foundations to support emerging data-driven cyber-physical applications and touches on key issues such as privacy. The authors present solutions based on recent research and novel ideas that leverage techniques from cyber-physical systems, sensor networks, machine learning, data mining, and information fusion. Offers a unique interdisciplinary perspective bridging social networks, big data, cyber-physical systems, and reliability Presents novel theoretical foundations for assured social sensing and modeling humans as sensors Includes case studies and application examples based on real data sets Supplemental material includes sample datasets and fact-finding software that implements the main algorithms described in the book

Provides an overview of the developments and advances in the field of network clustering and blockmodeling over the last 10 years This book offers an integrated treatment of network clustering and blockmodeling, covering all of the newest approaches and methods that have been developed over the last decade. Presented in a comprehensive manner, it offers the foundations for understanding network structures and processes, and features a wide variety of new techniques addressing issues that occur during the partitioning of networks across multiple disciplines such as community detection, blockmodeling of valued networks, role assignment, and stochastic blockmodeling. Written by a team of international experts in the field, Advances in Network Clustering and Blockmodeling offers a plethora of diverse perspectives covering topics such as: bibliometric analyses of the network clustering literature; clustering approaches to networks; label propagation for clustering; and treating missing network data before partitioning. It also examines the partitioning of signed networks, multimode networks, and linked networks. A chapter on structured networks and coarsegrained descriptions is presented, along with another on scientific coauthorship networks. The book finishes with a section covering conclusions and directions for future work. In addition, the editors provide numerous tables, figures, case studies, examples, datasets, and more. Offers a clear and insightful look at the state of the art in network clustering and blockmodeling Provides an excellent mix of mathematical rigor and practical application in a comprehensive manner Presents a suite of new methods, procedures, algorithms for partitioning networks, as well as new techniques for visualizing matrix arrays Features numerous examples throughout, enabling readers to gain a better understanding of research methods and to conduct their own research effectively Written by leading contributors in the field of spatial networks analysis Advances in Network Clustering and Blockmodeling is an ideal book for graduate and undergraduate students taking courses on network analysis or working with networks using real data. It will also benefit researchers and practitioners interested in network analysis.

Online social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, offer millions of members the opportunity to befriend one another, send messages to each other, and post content on the site — actions which generate mind-boggling amounts of data every day.To make sense of the massive data from these sites, we resort to social media mining to answer questions like the following: