Structure and stability of online chat networks built on emotion-carrying links

TL;DR

This paper analyzes online chat networks as physical systems, revealing self-organized dynamics, long-range correlations, and emotion-based structural features that resemble natural and social systems.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to studying online chat networks using physical system analysis, highlighting the role of emotion-carrying links in network structure and dynamics.

Findings

Discovery of self-organized dynamics and long-range correlations.

Identification of emotion-related k-core structures.

Observation of critical fluctuations at percolation threshold.

Abstract

High-resolution data of online chats are studied as a physical system in laboratory in order to quantify collective behavior of users. Our analysis reveals strong regularities characteristic to natural systems with additional features. In particular, we find self-organized dynamics with long-range correlations in user actions and persistent associations among users that have the properties of a social network. Furthermore, the evolution of the graph and its architecture with specific k-core structure are shown to be related with the type and the emotion arousal of exchanged messages. Partitioning of the graph by deletion of the links which carry high arousal messages exhibits critical fluctuations at the percolation threshold.