relation: http://eprints.imtlucca.it/3570/
title: Twitlang(er): Interactions Modeling Language (and Interpreter) for Twitter
creator: De Nicola, Rocco
creator: Maggi, Alessandro
creator: Petrocchi, Marinella
creator: Spognardi, Angelo
creator: Tiezzi, Francesco
subject: QA76 Computer software
description: Online social networks are widespread means to enact interactive collaboration among people by, e.g., planning events, diffusing information, and enabling discussions. Twitter provides one of the most illustrative example of how people can effectively interact without resorting to traditional communication media. For example, the platform has acted as a unique medium for reliable communication in emergency or for organising cooperative mass actions. This use of Twitter in a cooperative, possibly critical, setting calls for a more precise awareness of the dynamics regulating message spreading. To this aim, in this paper, we propose Twitlang, a formal language to model interactions among Twitter accounts. The operational semantics associated to the language allows users to clearly and precisely determine the effects of actions performed by Twitter accounts, such as post, retweet, reply-to or delete tweets. The language is implemented in the form of a Maude interpreter, Twitlanger, which takes a language term as an input and, automatically or interactively, explores the computations arising from the term. By relying on this interpreter, automatic verification of communication properties of Twitter accounts can be carried out via the analysis tools provided by the Maude framework. We illustrate the benefits of our executable formalisation by means of few simple, yet typical, examples of Twitter interactions, whose effects are somehow subtle.
publisher: Springer
date: 2015
type: Book Section
type: PeerReviewed
identifier:   De Nicola, Rocco and Maggi, Alessandro and Petrocchi, Marinella and Spognardi, Angelo and Tiezzi, Francesco  Twitlang(er): Interactions Modeling Language (and Interpreter) for Twitter.   In:  Software Engineering and Formal Methods. 13th International Conference, SEFM 2015, York, UK, September 7-11, 2015. Proceedings.   Lecture Notes in Computer Science  (9276).  Springer, pp. 327-343.  ISBN 978-3-319-22969-0      (2015)  
relation: http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22969-0_23
relation: doi:10.1007/978-3-319-22969-0_23