Language change is a complex social phenomenon, revealing pathways of communication and sociocultural influence. But, while language change has long been a topic of study in sociolinguistics, traditional linguistic research methods rely on circumstantial evidence, estimating the direction of change from differences between older and younger speakers. In this paper, we use a data set of several million Twitter users to track language changes in progress. First, we show that language change can be viewed as a form of social influence: we observe complex contagion for phonetic spellings and “netspeak” abbreviations (e.g., lol), but not for older dialect markers from spoken language. Next, we test whether specific types of social network connections are more influential than others, using a parametric Hawkes process model. We find that tie strength plays an important role: densely embedded social ties are significantly better conduits of linguistic influence. Geographic locality appears to play a more limited role: we find relatively little evidence to support the hypothesis that individuals are more influenced by geographically local social ties, even in their usage of geographical dialect markers.

 

The Social Dynamics of Language Change in Online Networks
Rahul Goel, Sandeep Soni, Naman Goyal, John Paparrizos, Hanna Wallach, Fernando Diaz, Jacob Eisenstein

Source: arxiv.org

A long-running investigation of exceptional children reveals what it takes to produce the scientists who will lead the twenty-first century.

Source: www.nature.com

Despite the pivotal role that both power and interpersonal trust play in a multitude of social exchange situations, relatively little is known about their interplay. Moreover, previous theorizing makes competing claims. Do we consider our relatively more powerful exchange partners to be less trustworthy, as rational choice reasoning would suggest? Or do more complex psychological mechanisms lead us to trust them more, as motivated cognition reasoning implies? Extending the latter approach, we develop and empirically test three hypotheses on the interrelation between perceptions of interpersonal trust and power. According to the status value hypothesis, individuals are more likely to befriend those whom they or others perceive as powerful. The status signaling hypothesis states that the friends of people one perceives as powerful will also be seen as powerful. According to the self-monitoring hypothesis, high self-monitors are more likely than low self-monitors to befriend those they or others perceive as powerful. We use multiplex stochastic actor-based models to analyze the co-evolution of trust and power relations among n = 49 employees in a Dutch Youth Care organization. Data covers three waves of a longitudinal sociometric network survey collected over a period of 18 months in the years 2009–2010. In general, we find some support for all three hypotheses, though the effects are weak. Being one of the first organizational field studies on the co-evolution of power and trust, we conclude with discussing the implications of these findings for the study of social exchange processes.

 

The co-evolution of power and friendship networks in an organization
ALONA LABUN, RAFAEL WITTEK, CHRISTIAN STEGLICH
Network Science , Volume 4 , Issue 03 , September 2016, pp 364 – 384
doi: 10.1017/nws.2016.7

Source: www.cambridge.org

The theory of pulse-coupled oscillators provides a framework to formulate and develop self-organizing synchronization strategies for wireless communications and mobile computing. These strategies show low complexity and are adaptive to changes in the network. Even though several protocols have been proposed and theoretical insight was gained there is no proof that guarantees synchronization of the oscillator phases in general dynamic coupling topologies under technological constraints. Here, we introduce a family of coupling strategies for pulse-coupled oscillators and prove that synchronization emerges for systems with arbitrary connected and dynamic topologies, individually changing signal propagation and processing delays, and stochastic pulse emission. It is shown by simulations how unreliable links or intentionally incomplete communication between oscillators can improve synchronization performance.

 

Convergence of Self-Organizing Pulse-Coupled Oscillator Synchronization in Dynamic Networks

Johannes Klinglmayr ; Christian Bettstetter ; Marc Timme ; Christoph Kirst

IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control. Scheduled for August 2017.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TAC.2016.2593642

Source: ieeexplore.ieee.org

Cities are changing constantly. All urban systems face different conditions from day to day. Even when averaged regularities can be found, urban systems will be more efficient if they can adapt to changes at the same speeds at which these occur. Technology can assist humans in achieving this adaptation. Inspired by cybernetics, we propose a description of cities as adaptive systems. We identify three main components: information, algorithms, and agents, which we illustrate with current and future examples. The implications of adaptive cities are manifold, with direct impacts on mobility, sustainability, resilience, governance, and society. Still, the potential of adaptive cities will not depend so much on technology as on how we use it.

 

Adaptive Cities: A Cybernetic Perspective on Urban Systems
Carlos Gershenson, Paolo Santi, Carlo Ratti

Source: arxiv.org