A Distance Measure for the Analysis of Polar Opinion Dynamics in Social Networks

Abstract

Analysis of opinion dynamics in social networks plays an important role in today’s life. For predicting users’ political preference, it is particularly important to be able to analyze the dynamics of competing polar opinions, such as pro-Democrat vs. pro-Republican. While observing the evolution of polar opinions in a social network over time, can we tell when the network evolved abnormally? Furthermore, can we predict how the opinions of the users will change in the future? To answer such questions, it is insufficient to study individual user behavior, since opinions can spread beyond users’ ego-networks. Instead, we need to consider the opinion dynamics of all users simultaneously and capture the connection between the individuals’ behavior and the global evolution pattern of the social network.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Aug 08, 2019
Source ID
10.1145/3332168

Entities

People

  • Ambuj Kumar Singh
  • Petko Bogdanov
  • Victor Amelkin

Organizations

  • Army Research Office
  • State University of New York at Albany
  • United States Army Research Laboratory
  • University of California
  • University of Pennsylvania

Tags

Readers

  • Educational Psychology
  • Neural Network Machine Learning.
  • Political Violence and Terrorism Studies.