Group Evolution Discovery in Social Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces GED, a new method for discovering group evolution in social networks, supported by initial experiments on email networks and comparisons with existing methods.

Contribution

The paper presents the GED method, a novel approach for identifying group evolution in social networks, filling a gap in existing social network analysis techniques.

Findings

GED method successfully detects group evolution patterns.

Experimental results on email networks validate GED's effectiveness.

Comparison shows GED outperforms two existing methods.

Abstract

Group extraction and their evolution are among the topics which arouse the greatest interest in the domain of social network analysis. However, while the grouping methods in social networks are developed very dynamically, the methods of group evolution discovery and analysis are still uncharted territory on the social network analysis map. Therefore the new method for the group evolution discovery called GED is proposed in this paper. Additionally, the results of the first experiments on the email based social network together with comparison with two other methods of group evolution discovery are presented.