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Twitlang(er): Interactions Modeling Language (and Interpreter) for Twitter

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Software Engineering and Formal Methods (SEFM 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 9276))

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Abstract

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.

Research supported by the European projects IP 257414 ASCENS and STReP 600708 QUANTICOL, the Italian PRIN 2010LHT4KM CINA, and the Registro.it project MIB (My Information Bubble).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For the sake of simplicity, the set \(U\) is statically defined. This is adequate for the purpose of our study; a more dynamic definition of the set could be considered in further developments.

  2. 2.

    Both the command and its output use a shorthand notation - i.e. the terms example, M1 and M2 - that is equationally equivalent to a complex composition of terms.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IMT Institute for Advanced Studies, Lucca, Italy

    Rocco De Nicola & Alessandro Maggi

  2. CNR, Istituto di Informatica e Telematica, Pisa, Italy

    Marinella Petrocchi & Angelo Spognardi

  3. School of Science and Technology, University of Camerino, Camerino, Italy

    Francesco Tiezzi

Authors
  1. Rocco De Nicola
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  2. Alessandro Maggi
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  3. Marinella Petrocchi
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  4. Angelo Spognardi
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  5. Francesco Tiezzi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Francesco Tiezzi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of York, York, United Kingdom

    Radu Calinescu

  2. Software Engineering, Department of Computer Science, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Bernhard Rumpe

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De Nicola, R., Maggi, A., Petrocchi, M., Spognardi, A., Tiezzi, F. (2015). Twitlang(er): Interactions Modeling Language (and Interpreter) for Twitter. In: Calinescu, R., Rumpe, B. (eds) Software Engineering and Formal Methods. SEFM 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9276. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22969-0_23

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22969-0_23

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