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Social Influence Study in Online Networks: A Three-Level Review

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Abstract

Social network analysis (SNA) views social relationships in terms of network theory consisting of nodes and ties. Nodes are the individual actors within the networks; ties are the relationships between the actors. In the sequel, we will use the term node and individual interchangeably. The relationship could be friendship, communication, trust, etc. These reason is that these relationships and ties are driven by social influence, which is the most important phenomenon that distinguishes social network from other networks. In this paper, we present an overview of the representative research work in social influence study. Those studies can be classified into three levels, namely individual, community, and network levels. Throughout the study, we are able to unveil a series of research directions in future and possible applications based on the state-of-the-art study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Cyber Engineering, Xidian University, Xi’an, 710126, China

    Hui Li, Jiang-Tao Cui & Jian-Feng Ma

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  1. Hui Li
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  2. Jiang-Tao Cui
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  3. Jian-Feng Ma
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Correspondence to Hui Li.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 61173089, 61202179, 61472298, and U1135002, the Scientific Research Foundation for the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars of State Education Ministry of China, and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China.

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Li, H., Cui, JT. & Ma, JF. Social Influence Study in Online Networks: A Three-Level Review. J. Comput. Sci. Technol. 30, 184–199 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-015-1512-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-015-1512-7

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