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Assignment-1

Find below the answers for the questions asked in the Assignment.1:

Link to the assignment is here.

PAPER ONE: Tie strength in question answer on social network sites
  1. How do the authors define strong and weak ties, and how did they measure the strength of a tie in Social Network Sites?

    Strong ties and weak ties are usually connections that an individual have with people around them, online/offline. The tie strength represents the depth of friendship between individuals. Whether they are close friends or acquaintances.

    Measurement of tie strength was based on the following variables (which were derived from the study by Gilbert and Karahalios):

    - Days since last communication
    - Days since first communication
    - Words exchanged
    - Mean tie strength of mutual friends
    - Positive emotion words
    - Intimacy words
  2. What could be the reasons that more helpful answers come from weak ties? What could be the reasons that more helpful answers come from strong ties?

    Weak Ties:
    - Different Social Circles enabled weak ties to provide information outside of one's own circle's domain.

    Strong Ties:- Willingness to help due to closeness of friendship
    - Altruism
    - Willingness the go deeper into the answers.
  3. As participants were especially looking for reliable information, how could reliability of the information source be measured in Social Networks?
          The following findings from the Study describe some possible ways of measuring reliability based on the Sample Group's responses:
 1) Strong ties' knowledge of the Participant
 2) Overall knowledge gained by the Participant based on the answers
 3) Answers with citations
 4) Trust in the Participant's perception of tie's knowledge on topics



Although all this is in the findings of the Study, as the Study states, it is severely limited.

It discounts online user behaviour. Behavior preferences when it comes to asking questions.
Like:
1) Where do the Participants ask?
2) Who do the Participants like to ask?
3) As they rightly stated, Newsfeed algorithms, and post visibility.
4) Timing of the Post.
5) Digital preferences, and online behavior of the friends of the participants.
6) Structuring of the Questions.
7) Personal communication styles between Participants and their ties.

The study also works on measuring tie strengths based on metrics such as Intimacy words, and Positive emotions, which are very subjective, arbitrary, and can be misleading in measuring  tie strengths.

I also find the sample group to be too small to be relevant in giving any insightful data.





  1. Which mechanisms do the games include that motivate people to “think alike”?

    Games with a Purpose, especially the case in example of ESP Game, utilise matching of Strings of responses of both (or all) the players involved, to maximise acceptable captions for the images.
    Similarly, other games employ algorithms which try to match the responses of each player against the other's, reward the players with points, and thus motivate them to 'think alike', so to speak.
  2. Explore the site http://ajapaik.ee/ and note some game mechanics that make this GWAP work.

    1) Geotagging the pictures
    2) Reposting Photos
    3) Contributor's Leaderboard based on Album contributions, overall contributions, geotagging, dating the photo, and reposting)
    4) Cross-sharing of pictures between albums
    5) Discussion forums for higher user engagement, and creation of content.
    6) Option for sharing to other online platforms for greater reach.
These are some of the things a user can do at ajapaik.ee. The points of a user seems to be calculated based on how many pictures they tag to locations, how many pictures they upload or add to existing albums, share pictures across albums and other platforms, and finally create their own collections/albums from the existing array of pictures and/or new pictures.

There seems to be an option of interacting and discussing image content with other users online as well. However, I've not explored or engaged anybody, so I'm not sure whether it has been gamified or not.

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