IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication Sep 2017

Integrating Ego, Homophily, and Structural Factors to Measure User Influence in Online Community

Chenghong Zhang ; Tian Lu Fudan University ; Shoucong Chen Google (United States) ; Cheng Zhang Fudan University

Abstract

Research problem: In the current information age, people are increasingly accustomed to sharing their special interests online and are influenced by the relationships developed from that sharing. The purpose of this study was to better measure peer influence in these online communities. Research questions: 1. How can peer influence in online communities be measured in a way that comprehensively incorporates peer-based characteristics, the homophily effect, and the structural position of a user in the network? 2. Is the method proposed in this study superior to other existing methods? Literature review: Previous literature on measuring online user influence can be classified into two streams: 1. Those that focus on the intrinsic characteristics of social media players to measure peer influence; 2. Those that address social network structure. Relevant computing algorithms include Topic-Based PageRank, Quality-Structure index, and so on. Although the first stream considers afocal peer's intrinsic characteristics, it overlooks the interpeer attraction in terms of similarity and discrepant knowledge among peers. The second stream mostly stresses the structures of social networks to measure network-wide peer influence but underestimates the effect of interpeer attraction that may leverage every diffusion step of peer influence through the network. To fill this research gap, this study proposes a new method of measuring network user influence that incorporates peers' intrinsic factors, interpeer influence factors as homophily effect, and network structure. Homophily refers to the degree to which pairs of individuals who interact are similar with respect to certain attributes. Methodology: From the communication sender-receiver perspective, we developed a computable method that incorporates peer-based characteristics, the homophily effect, and the structural position of a user in the network to measure the social network user influence. Two empirical studies were subsequently conducted in a social network service-based online community and an online professional logistics community to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Results and conclusions: The empirical results show that our proposed method provides higher prediction accuracy of user influence rank in an online community than the other existing methods. These findings lay a foundation for future theoretical exploration and provide a useful tool for targeting influential users in online communities such as blogs, bulletin board systems, and forums.

Journal
IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
Published
2017-09-01
DOI
10.1109/tpc.2017.2703038
CompPile
Open Access
Closed
Topics
social media book reviews editorial matter
Export
BibTeX RIS

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (2)

  1. López et al. (2023)
    The Effect of Message Repetition on Information Diffusion on Twitter: An Agent-…
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  2. Hannah et al. (2018)
    Exploring an Ethnography-Based Knowledge Network Model for Professional Communi…
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication

References (63) · 5 in this index

  1. Pitt et al. (2011)
    The Social Media Release as a Corporate Communication Tool for Bloggers
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  2. Zollet et al. (2015)
    Critical Factors Influencing Diffusion of Interactivity Innovations on Corporat…
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  3. 10.1016/j.bushor.2011.01.007
     ↗
  4. 10.1108/JPBM-06-2014-0635
     ↗
  5. 10.1177/009365096023001001
     ↗
Show all 63 →
  1. blume (1998)
    Experimental evidence on the evolution of meaning of messages in sender-receiver games
    Amer Econ Rev
  2. bachnik (2005)
    Quantitative and sociological analysis of blog networks
    Acta Physica Polonica B
  3. White et al. (2015)
    Communication of Fantasy Sports: A Comparative Study of User-Generated Content …
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  4. fournier (2009)
    Getting brand communities right
    Harvard Bus Rev
  5. 10.1177/1094670511411703
     ↗
  6. christakis (2009)
    Connected How your friends' friends' friends affect everything you feel think and do
  7. 10.25300/MISQ/2013/37.4.03
     ↗
  8. 10.1257/aer.101.4.1601
     ↗
  9. langville (2006)
    10.1515/9781400830329
    Google's Pagerank and Beyond the Science of Search Engine Rankings  ↗
  10. 10.1002/asi.21487
     ↗
  11. 10.1002/asi.20943
     ↗
  12. lin (2005)
    A sender-receiver framework for knowledge transfer
    MIS Quart  ↗
  13. 10.1002/dir.20082
     ↗
  14. Mackiewicz et al. (2014)
    Product Review Users' Perceptions of Review Quality: The Role of Credibility, I…
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  15. wright (2006)
    Blog Marketing The Revolutionary New Way to Increase Sales Build Your Brand and Get Exceptional Results
  16. 10.1145/988672.988739
     ↗
  17. 10.1007/s11280-004-4872-4
     ↗
  18. nakajima (0)
    Discovering important bloggers based on analyzing blog threads
    Proceedings of 2nd Annual Workshop on the Weblogging Ecosystem
  19. adar (0)
    Implicit structure and the dynamics of blogspace
    Proc 13th Int World Wide Web Conf
  20. garfield (1955)
    Science indexes for science: A new dimension in documentation through association of ideas
    Science  ↗
  21. 10.1007/11552413_164
     ↗
  22. 10.1287/mnsc.1110.1421
     ↗
  23. 10.1073/pnas.1116502109
     ↗
  24. 10.1073/pnas.1006155107
     ↗
  25. clark (2007)
    Matching and sorting when like attracts like
  26. 10.1177/001872675701000404
     ↗
  27. tang (0)
    Identifing influential users in an online healthcare social network
    Proc IEEE Int Conf Intell Secur Inf
  28. 10.2307/2112858
     ↗
  29. 10.1287/mnsc.1050.0363
     ↗
  30. 10.1002/asi.21452
     ↗
  31. 10.1145/1321440.1321588
     ↗
  32. pentland (2014)
    Social Physics How Good Ideas Spread?The Lessons from a New Science
  33. 10.1287/isre.1100.0339
     ↗
  34. 10.1016/j.jretai.2004.04.005
     ↗
  35. 10.1287/mnsc.1110.1648
     ↗
  36. 10.1509/jmkr.47.4.643
     ↗
  37. cha (0)
    Measuring user influence in Twitter: The million follower fallacy
    Proc Int Conf Weblogs and Social Media
  38. 10.1007/978-3-319-06483-3_4
     ↗
  39. (2014)
    Digital consumers are coming
    CEIBS Business Review
  40. aral (2012)
    Identifying influential and susceptible members of social networks
    Science  ↗
  41. bergstrom (2014)
    Who are opinion leaders, and why do they matter?
  42. 10.1016/j.giq.2012.06.004
     ↗
  43. 10.1162/rest.90.4.735
     ↗
  44. owyang (2009)
    The future of the social web
    Forrester Report
  45. 10.1086/344399
     ↗
  46. 10.1509/jm.11.0428
     ↗
  47. 10.1509/jmkr.48.3.425
     ↗
  48. 10.1073/pnas.0908800106
     ↗
  49. 10.1080/01463378009369372
     ↗
  50. 10.1287/mksc.1100.0566
     ↗
  51. 10.1287/isre.2014.0531
     ↗
  52. 10.1146/annurev.soc.27.1.415
     ↗
  53. 10.1111/j.1468-2958.1975.tb00281.x
     ↗
  54. 10.1177/0956462412472455
     ↗
  55. Burton et al. (2012)
    Differential Effects of the Volume and Diversity of Communication Network Ties …
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  56. 10.1177/1075547008328797
     ↗
  57. 10.1086/267838
     ↗
  58. 10.1111/j.1468-2958.1974.tb00252.x
     ↗
CrossRef global citation count: 14 View in citation network → Build reading path →

Related Articles

  1. Rhetorica Sep 2023
    Heritage and Hate: Old South Rhetoric at Southern Universities by Stephen M. Monroe (review) ↗
    rhetorical criticism genre theory discourse analysis multimodality social media race and writing public rhetoric book reviews editorial matter
  2. Rhetoric & Public Affairs Jun 2023
    Decoding the Digital Church: Evangelical Storytelling and the Election of Donald J. Trump ↗
    Candice Ruh
    modern rhetorical theory rhetorical criticism discourse analysis qualitative research digital rhetoric social media gender and writing book reviews editorial matter
  3. Rhetorica Mar 2021
    The Routledge Reader of African American Rhetoric: The Long Durée of Black Voices ed. by Vershawn Ashanti Young and Michelle Bachelor Robinson ↗
    Mudiwa Pettus
    rhetorical criticism genre theory discourse analysis african american rhetorics writing pedagogy social media literacy studies race and writing gender and writing public rhetoric book reviews editorial matter
  4. Communication Design Quarterly May 2020
    Updates from SIGDOC and CDQ: editorial ↗
    Daniel P. Richards; Derek G. Ross
    scientific writing social media book reviews editorial matter
  5. Rhetoric & Public Affairs Mar 2016
    The Rhetoric of Pregnancy. By Marika Seigel. Foreword by Jane Pincus ↗
    Judy Z. Segal
    rhetorical criticism social media book reviews editorial matter