Signed Networks in Social Media
Jure Leskovec, Daniel Huttenlocher, Jon Kleinberg

TL;DR
This paper investigates how positive and negative relationships in social media influence network structure, comparing classical social psychology theories with new models to better understand online social dynamics.
Contribution
It offers a large-scale evaluation of signed network theories on social media data and proposes a new status-based theory to explain observed interaction patterns.
Findings
Structural balance captures some interaction patterns
Directed networks show deviations from classical theories
A new status theory better explains edge signs
Abstract
Relations between users on social media sites often reflect a mixture of positive (friendly) and negative (antagonistic) interactions. In contrast to the bulk of research on social networks that has focused almost exclusively on positive interpretations of links between people, we study how the interplay between positive and negative relationships affects the structure of on-line social networks. We connect our analyses to theories of signed networks from social psychology. We find that the classical theory of structural balance tends to capture certain common patterns of interaction, but that it is also at odds with some of the fundamental phenomena we observe --- particularly related to the evolving, directed nature of these on-line networks. We then develop an alternate theory of status that better explains the observed edge signs and provides insights into the underlying social…
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Taxonomy
TopicsOpinion Dynamics and Social Influence · Social Media and Politics · Complex Network Analysis Techniques
