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Pacific-Asia Workshop on Intelligence and Security Informatics

PAISI 2013: Intelligence and Security Informatics pp 47–61Cite as

Identifying Peer Influence in Online Social Networks Using Transfer Entropy

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 8039))

Abstract

The past few years have witnessed the rapid growth of online social networks, which have become important hubs of social activity and conduits of information. Identifying social influence in these newly emerging platforms can provide us with significant insights to better understand the interaction behaviors among online users. However, it is difficult for us to measure the influence quantitatively among user peers, since many key factors such as homophily and heterogeneity, can not be observed in our real world conveniently. More recent work mainly focuses on developing theoretical models based on explicit causal knowledge. Nevertheless, such knowledge is usually not available and often needs to be discovered. In this paper, we introduce a model free approach to formulate causal inferences of behaviors among user peers. Experimental results show that influence measured by our approach could successfully reconstruct the underlying networks structure. Furthermore, two additional case studies based on this approach reveal that influentials wield power through specific venues, which constitute a comparatively small portion of the whole channels.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The State Key Laboratory of Management and Control for Complex Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Saike He, Xiaolong Zheng, Daniel Zeng, Zhu Zhang & Chuan Luo

  2. Department of Management Information System, University of Arizona, Tucson, 85719, Arizona, USA

    Daniel Zeng

  3. The School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China

    Kainan Cui

Authors
  1. Saike He
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  2. Xiaolong Zheng
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  3. Daniel Zeng
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  4. Kainan Cui
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  5. Zhu Zhang
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  6. Chuan Luo
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech, 1007 Pamplin Hall, 24061, Blacksburg, VA, USA

    G. Alan Wang

  2. Cloud Computing Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dongguan Research Institute of CASIA, Songshan Lake, 523808, Dongguan, China

    Xiaolong Zheng

  3. School of Business, Faculty of Business and Economics, The University of Hong Kong, 8/F, K.K. Leung Building, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, China

    Michael Chau

  4. Department of Management Information Systems, University of Arizona, McClelland Hall 430, 1130 East Helen Street, 85721, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Hsinchun Chen

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He, S., Zheng, X., Zeng, D., Cui, K., Zhang, Z., Luo, C. (2013). Identifying Peer Influence in Online Social Networks Using Transfer Entropy. In: Wang, G.A., Zheng, X., Chau, M., Chen, H. (eds) Intelligence and Security Informatics. PAISI 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8039. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39693-9_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39693-9_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-39692-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-39693-9

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