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Opportunistic Social Networks for Academia

Opportunistic Social Networks for Academia
Opportunistic Social Networks for Academia
This paper begins by describing the behavioural shift in online interactivity and how it has empowered the growth of online social networks and emergent forms of social awareness. It then discusses the notion of decentralised, peer-to-peer social networks and how this has been largely motivated by ideals that include giving users greater control over the data that they share in order to protect their privacy. At the same time it discusses the motivation for opportunistic contact that takes place when people are in geographical proximity (e.g. in the same office or attending the same event) and how those opportunities seem to establish the right context in which one can share and interpret ideas. Based on the hypothesis that the value of opportunistic contact in decentralised, peer-to-peer networks is more than the sum of its parts, we describe the deployment and evaluation of an application that lets users build opportunistic social networks, making use of decentralised, peer-to-peer infrastructures to ensure that users are in control of their information and leveraging geographic proximity for the exchange of ideas at the right place at the right time. The evaluation of this approach in an academic environment establishes opportunities and challenges for opportunistic social networks and a clear potential of this approach in terms of trust, context, and filtration to increase and improve social awareness.
Online Social Networks, Privacy, Opportunistic Networks, Peer-to-peer Networking, Decentralisation
Leedham, James
027841de-d3a5-4507-ac81-e85706f460a6
Tiropanis, Thanassis
d06654bd-5513-407b-9acd-6f9b9c5009d8
Leedham, James
027841de-d3a5-4507-ac81-e85706f460a6
Tiropanis, Thanassis
d06654bd-5513-407b-9acd-6f9b9c5009d8

Leedham, James and Tiropanis, Thanassis (2011) Opportunistic Social Networks for Academia. 1st International Workshop on Mobile and Online Social Networks (MOSN 2011), co-located with the 5th International Conference on Network and System Security (NSS 2011), Milan, Italy. 06 - 08 Sep 2011.

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

This paper begins by describing the behavioural shift in online interactivity and how it has empowered the growth of online social networks and emergent forms of social awareness. It then discusses the notion of decentralised, peer-to-peer social networks and how this has been largely motivated by ideals that include giving users greater control over the data that they share in order to protect their privacy. At the same time it discusses the motivation for opportunistic contact that takes place when people are in geographical proximity (e.g. in the same office or attending the same event) and how those opportunities seem to establish the right context in which one can share and interpret ideas. Based on the hypothesis that the value of opportunistic contact in decentralised, peer-to-peer networks is more than the sum of its parts, we describe the deployment and evaluation of an application that lets users build opportunistic social networks, making use of decentralised, peer-to-peer infrastructures to ensure that users are in control of their information and leveraging geographic proximity for the exchange of ideas at the right place at the right time. The evaluation of this approach in an academic environment establishes opportunities and challenges for opportunistic social networks and a clear potential of this approach in terms of trust, context, and filtration to increase and improve social awareness.

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More information

Published date: September 2011
Additional Information: Event Dates: 6-8 September 2011
Venue - Dates: 1st International Workshop on Mobile and Online Social Networks (MOSN 2011), co-located with the 5th International Conference on Network and System Security (NSS 2011), Milan, Italy, 2011-09-06 - 2011-09-08
Keywords: Online Social Networks, Privacy, Opportunistic Networks, Peer-to-peer Networking, Decentralisation
Organisations: Web & Internet Science

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 272958
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/272958
PURE UUID: 742402df-3675-45ee-a77c-0e3a9e72e1e2
ORCID for Thanassis Tiropanis: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-6195-2852

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 23 Oct 2011 22:10
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:31

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Contributors

Author: James Leedham
Author: Thanassis Tiropanis ORCID iD

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