Social Capital Reading Stack

Thesis: A framework for decentralised trust reasoning

2007-06-03T07:38:00.000+00:00

A copy of my thesis titled "A framework for decentralised trust reasoning" is now available at http://redkeydigital.com/papers/a_abdulrahman_thesis.pdf.

Trust in Game Theory

2005-06-19T14:53:00.000+00:00

Discussion of trust in game theory.

A Survey of Trust Management and Resource Discovery Technologies in Peer-to-Peer Applications

2005-06-09T21:22:00.000+00:00

Research Papers of Hitoshi Yamamoto

2004-12-08T21:09:00.000+00:00

Studies/simulations on reputation systems in C2C markets.

Preface to a conference on Trust

2004-11-25T09:42:00.000+00:00

Lawrence Lessig on Trust.

Small Worlds in Security Systems: an Analysis of the PGP Certificate Graph

2004-11-22T01:46:00.000+00:00

Abstract: We propose a new approach to securing self-organized mobile ad hoc networks. In this approach, security is achieved in a fully self-organized manner; by this we mean that the
security system does not require any kind of certification authority or centralized server, even for the initialization phase. In our work, we were inspired by PGP [15] because its operation relies solely on the acquaintances between users. We show that the small-world phenomenon
naturally emerges in the PGP system as a consequence of the self-organization of users. We show this by studying the PGP certificate graph properties and by quantifying its small-world characteristics. We argue that the certificate graphs of self-organized security systems will exhibit a similar small-world phenomenon, and we provide a way to model self-organized certificate graphs. The results of the PGP certificate graph analysis and graph modelling can be used to build new self-organized security systems and to test the performance of the existing proposals. In this work, we refer to such an example.

How To Search a Social Network

2004-11-18T07:39:00.000+00:00

by Lada Adamic and Aytan Adar, HP Labs

This sounds like something that could inform search protocols in reputation networks.

Abstract: We address the question of how participants in a small world experiment are able to find short paths in a social network using only local information about their immediate contacts. We simulate such experiments on a network of actual email contacts within an organization. We show that strategies using information about a contact's position in physical space or in an organizational hierarchy relative to the target can effectively be used to locate most targets using the small world method but not necessarily where the network is incomplete. We compare our findings to recent theoretical hypothesis about underlying social structure that would enable these simple search strategies to succeed.

Social Structure and Opinion Formation

2004-11-18T07:37:00.000+00:00

by Fang Wu and Bernardo Huberman, HP Labs.

Abstract: We present a dynamical theory of opinion formation that takes explicitly into account the structure of the social network in which individuals are embedded. The theory predicts the evolution of a set of opinions through the social network and establishes the existence of a martingale property, i.e. that the expected weighted fraction of the population that holds a given opinion is constant in time. Most importantly, this weighted fraction is not either zero or one, but corresponds to a non-trivial distribution of opinions in the long time limit. This coexistence of opinions within a social network is in agreement with the often observed locality effect, in which an opinion or a fad is localized to given groups without infecting the whole society. We verified these predictions, as well as those concerning the fragility of opinions and the importance of highly connected individuals in opinion formation, by performing computer experiments on a number of social networks.

You Don't Know Me, but... Social Capital & Social Software

2004-11-17T23:23:00.000+00:00

Abstract: Social capital analysts have debated the implications of the Internet for some years now. But this debate has recently been joined from the opposite side, as software experts and developers are showing an increased desire to understand and improve social networks, both offline and online.This report introduces some of the core ideas of this new unified debate, and outlines possible directions for the future.

Internet-Scale Namespaces

2004-11-17T14:54:00.000+00:00

Article about namespaces. Also read Part II on names and trust.

Publications of German Sakaryan

2004-11-17T03:03:00.000+00:00

Some interesting papers on the macro aspects of P2P communities and its dynamics.

RedNova News - Psychohistory is Coming,: ; Scientists Learning to Take Society's Temperature

2004-11-15T20:01:00.000+00:00

Excerpt: "Among the newest of the enterprises - and closest to the spirit of Asimov's psychohistory - is a discipline called sociophysics. The name has been around for decades, but only in the 21st century has it become more science than slogan.

Like Asimov's psychohistory, sociophysics is rooted in statistical mechanics, the math used by physicists to describe the big picture when lacking data about the details. Nobody can track the trillion trillion molecules of air floating around in a room, for instance, but statistical mechanics can tell you how an air conditioner will affect the overall temperature.

In a similar way, science cannot describe how any given individual will behave. But put enough people together, Asimov's psychohistorian Hari Seldon reasoned, and laws of human interaction will produce predictable patterns - just as the way molecules move and interact determines the temperature and pressure of a gas."

Connectedness: What is social capital and how do we measure it?

2004-11-15T19:59:00.000+00:00

References to papers about making theidea of "social capital" more concrete, and one paper on how to measure it.

Behavioral Game Theory: Experiments in Strategic Interaction, by Colin Camerer

2004-11-01T23:42:00.000+00:00

Game theory, with feelings. This book claims to have lots of experiments to show where game theory succeeds and where it fails. Of interest are the areas mentioned in this paragraph of the abstract:

Behavioral game theory has three ingredients that come clearly into focus in this book: mathematical theories of how moral obligation and vengeance affect the way people bargain and trust each other; a theory of how limits in the brain constrain the number of steps of "I think he thinks . . ." reasoning people naturally do; and a theory of how people learn from experience to make better strategic decisions. Strategic interactions that can be explained by behavioral game theory include bargaining, games of bluffing as in sports and poker, strikes, how conventions help coordinate a joint activity, price competition and patent races, and building up reputations for trustworthiness or ruthlessness in business or life.

Looks like a good resource.

When is Reputation Bad

2004-11-01T23:00:00.000+00:00

Ely, Fudenberg and Levine discusses a scenario where the presence of a reputation system may invoke bad behaviour in good players in order to maintain a good reputation. Framing their work within game theory, the authors describe a class of games where:

The key properties are that participation is optional for the short-run players, and that every action of the long-run player that makes the short-run players want to participate has a chance of being interpreted as a signal that the long-run player is "bad."

Paul Resnick has written a detailed review of the paper in his blog - also a recommended layman's read. There are interesting comments from readers along the lines of the age-old game theory vs. irrationality debate.

Choosing people: the role of social capital in information seeking behaviour

2004-10-29T04:23:00.000+00:00

Abstract: It is an almost universal finding in studies investigating human information behaviour that people choose other people as their preferred source of information. An explanation for the use of people as information sources is that they are easier to approach than more formal sources and therefore are a least effort option. However there have been few studies that have investigated who the people chosen as information sources are and what their relationship to the information seeker is. This paper reports findings that come out of a larger investigation of the information seeking behaviour of a random sample of residents of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Using the theory of social capital as a conceptual framework and the methods of social network analysis, this study investigated the relational factors associated with the choice of people as information sources. Results indicate that respondents chose people who had better resources than they had and were not well known by them. This suggests that respondents were deliberate in their choice of people information sources and therefore it is speculated that people are not necessarily the least effort option but may require considerable effort to seek out and consult.

Collective Identity and Cooperation in a Public Goods Dilemma: A Matter of Trust or Self-Efficacy?

2004-10-29T00:09:00.000+00:00

Abstract: According to Self-Categorization Theory people may define their self-concept in terms of collective identity when engaged in intergroup comparisons and in terms of personal identity when engaged in interpersonal comparisons. This difference in level of categorization (collective versus personal identity) is believed to affect the extent people identify with their group and subsequently their behavior in social dilemma situations. The present study investigates whether people contribute more in a public goods dilemma when collective identity is made salient than when personal identity is made salient, and further which processes may underlie this behavioral effect. Results revealed that people identified more strongly with the collective and contributed more when collective identity was made salient compared to when personal identity was made salient. Furthermore, this behavioral effect seemed to be mediated by perceptions of self-efficacy rather than by perceptions of the trustworthiness of people’s fellow group members.

Interpersonal and Mass Communication: Matters of Trust and Control

2004-10-29T00:08:00.000+00:00

Abstract: The proliferation of information technologies in our modern society offers an incentive to investigate various aspects of communication. This study is meant as a preliminary comparison of trust and control between interpersonal and mass communication. Drawing on the treatment of modernity and postmodernity, I investigate how individuals perceive their own action versus both friends’ and other people’s actions across two types of information sources -- the radio and a friend -- and types of messages -- going to a concert and going to a restaurant. These messages were chosen for similarities – both are enjoyable experiences – and differences, as we might expect various levels of expertise across sources on these topics. Data was taken from a college vignette study, and levels of trust in the content of the message were found to vary across sources of information, and a weak gender effect is evident when analyzing differences between perceptions of self and others’ actions.

Audun Josang's papers

2004-10-27T23:29:00.000+00:00

Josang's publications on trust models using his Subjective Logic and Beta Reputation System.

Review of Conte, Rosaria and Paolucci, Mario: Reputation in Artificial Societies: Social Beliefs for Social Order

2004-10-26T23:54:00.000+00:00

In depth review of the book.

Agorics Inc.- The Agoric Papers

2004-10-23T23:16:00.000+00:00

The three famous Miller & Drexler papers on agoric computing.

The Digital Silk Road

2004-10-23T23:13:00.000+00:00

1995 Agorics Inc paper on micropayment and reputation based markets.

Dynamic Communities in Referral Networks

2004-10-23T21:15:00.000+00:00

(PDF doc)

Abstract: Consider a decentralized agent-based approach for service location, where agents provide and consume services, and also cooperate with each other by giving referrals to other agents. That is, the agents form a referral network. Based on feedback from their users, the agents judge the quality of the services provided by others. Further, based on the judgments of service quality, the agents also judge the quality of the referrals given by others. The agents can thus adaptively select their neighbors in order to improve their local performance. The choices by the agents cause communities to emerge. According to our definition, an agent belongs to a community only if it has been useful to the other members of the community in prior interactions regarding a particular topic. Hence, the membership in different communities is determined based on relationships among the agents. This paper compares topic-sensitive communities of the above kind with communities as studied in traditional link analysis. It studies the correlation between the two kinds of communities as they emerge in referral networks and evaluates the two kinds of communities in terms of their effectiveness in locating service providers.

Munindar P. Singh's Publications

2004-10-23T21:14:00.000+00:00

Lots of papers on trust, referral networks and p2p search.

Many-to-Many: Social Capital as Credit

2004-10-22T18:33:00.000+00:00

Interesting blog and comments about the role of social capital and hints at what an online supporting structure may be useful for.