Retweets as a Predictor of Relationships among Users on Social Media.

Link prediction is the problem of detecting missing links or predicting future link formation in a network. Application of link prediction to social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, is useful both for developing novel services and for sociological analyses. While most existing research on link p...

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Main Authors: Sho Tsugawa, Kosuke Kito
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2017-01-01
Series:PLoS ONE
Online Access:http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC5249064?pdf=render
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author Sho Tsugawa
Kosuke Kito
author_facet Sho Tsugawa
Kosuke Kito
author_sort Sho Tsugawa
collection DOAJ
description Link prediction is the problem of detecting missing links or predicting future link formation in a network. Application of link prediction to social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, is useful both for developing novel services and for sociological analyses. While most existing research on link prediction uses only the social network topology for the prediction, in social media, records of user activities such as posting, replying, and reposting are available. These records are expected to reflect user interest, and so incorporating them should improve link prediction. However, research into link prediction using the records of user activities is still in its infancy, and the effectiveness of such records for link prediction has not been fully explored. In this study, we focus in particular on records of reposting as a promising source that could be useful for link prediction, and investigate their effectiveness for link prediction on the popular social media platform Twitter. Our results show that (1) the prediction accuracy of techniques using reposting records is higher than that of popular topology-based techniques such as common neighbors and resource allocation for actively retweeting users, (2) the accuracy of link prediction techniques that use network topology alone can be improved by incorporating reposting records.
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spelling doaj.art-70758dd442684bfcaf8bde2ff98d94292022-12-21T22:28:05ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032017-01-01121e017027910.1371/journal.pone.0170279Retweets as a Predictor of Relationships among Users on Social Media.Sho TsugawaKosuke KitoLink prediction is the problem of detecting missing links or predicting future link formation in a network. Application of link prediction to social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, is useful both for developing novel services and for sociological analyses. While most existing research on link prediction uses only the social network topology for the prediction, in social media, records of user activities such as posting, replying, and reposting are available. These records are expected to reflect user interest, and so incorporating them should improve link prediction. However, research into link prediction using the records of user activities is still in its infancy, and the effectiveness of such records for link prediction has not been fully explored. In this study, we focus in particular on records of reposting as a promising source that could be useful for link prediction, and investigate their effectiveness for link prediction on the popular social media platform Twitter. Our results show that (1) the prediction accuracy of techniques using reposting records is higher than that of popular topology-based techniques such as common neighbors and resource allocation for actively retweeting users, (2) the accuracy of link prediction techniques that use network topology alone can be improved by incorporating reposting records.http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC5249064?pdf=render
spellingShingle Sho Tsugawa
Kosuke Kito
Retweets as a Predictor of Relationships among Users on Social Media.
PLoS ONE
title Retweets as a Predictor of Relationships among Users on Social Media.
title_full Retweets as a Predictor of Relationships among Users on Social Media.
title_fullStr Retweets as a Predictor of Relationships among Users on Social Media.
title_full_unstemmed Retweets as a Predictor of Relationships among Users on Social Media.
title_short Retweets as a Predictor of Relationships among Users on Social Media.
title_sort retweets as a predictor of relationships among users on social media
url http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC5249064?pdf=render
work_keys_str_mv AT shotsugawa retweetsasapredictorofrelationshipsamongusersonsocialmedia
AT kosukekito retweetsasapredictorofrelationshipsamongusersonsocialmedia