Mining social media: issues and challenges

Abstract

The prevalence of social media offers a new kind of laboratory for behavioral study. In the era of the social Web, we are presented with unparalleled opportunities and novel challenges. In this talk, we will use some of our recent studies of human behavior to illustrate our endeavors to improve the understanding of human behaviors in social media. We explore how one can efficiently gauge what's happening in social media with an inordinate number of groups and growing; inquire whether one can disentangle the complicated connections among users to find their group memberships; look into user migration patterns in the presence of seemingly unlimited choices of social media services; and investigate ways of exploiting vulnerability to protect user privacy on a social networking site. We can benefit significantly from extant sociological theories and methodologies in carrying out interdisciplinary research that sheds lights in mining social media. The improved understanding of human behavior can help develop social media services that encourage more user participation with better experience in growing social media activities.