D2.3: Models

 

Social characteristics (sociology)

Description

The “social characteristics” deals with all the information regarding the relationship that people have with one another individually, or as part of a group. 

Examples of attributes

 

1. Social networks (FOAF) 

   1. Personal network (mates, friends, …)  

   2. Family network  

   3. Professional network  

   4. Political network 

2. Affiliation 

   1. Groups 

   2. Professional groups 

   3. Political party 

3. Social categories (extracted via data mining) 

4. Social identity (reputation, informal roles & authority, etc.) 

5. Social style (competitive / collaborative, introvert / extravert) 

6. Social role  

   1. Team role (Belbin model)
      Plant, Resource investigator, Co-ordinator, Shaper, Monitor evaluator, Teamworker, Implementer, Completer

   2. Reputation 

 

Application domains

Many application domains deal with social characteristics. For instance, on the Internet, online social networking systems (such as LinkedIn, Friendster, Orkut) directly represent the social networks in order to facilitate the creation and the exploitation of social structure. Similarly, the Blogosphere (the Internet space that consists of a set of blogs) is often considered as a giant social network linking the different owners of blogs which refer to one another. Affiliation is also an attribute that is present in many systems relying on informal communication such as virtual communities. 

In the domain of electronic commerce, social characteristics can appear via the socio-economical group categories that can be extracted using data-mining techniques. 

Relevant standards

Standards such as FOAF (Friend Of A Friend) or XFN represent specifications that have been created specifically to represent people relationships. 

In the domain of eCommerce, CIQ (OASIS Customer Information Quality) also provides a way to specify relationships between a vendor and a customer, or a customer and a vendor organisation. 

 

 

20 / 53