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Applying author co-citation analysis to user interaction analysis: a case study on instant messaging groups

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Abstract

Author co-citation analysis (ACA) was an important method for discovering the intellectual structure of a given scientific field. There was sufficient experience that ACA would work with almost any user data that lent itself to co-occurrence. While most of the current researches still relied on the data of scientific literatures. In this study, in order to provide useful information for better enterprise management, the idea and method of ACA was applied to analyze the information interaction intensity and contents of enterprise web users. Firstly, the development of ACA was briefly introduced. Then the sample data and method used in this study were given. Three QQ groups’ instant messages of a Chinese company were selected as the raw data and the concepts and model of user interaction intensity (UII) were proposed by referring the ACA theory. Social network analysis method, combined with in-deep interview method were used to analyze the information interaction intensity and contents of enterprise users. Operatively, Excel, Ucinet, Pajek, Netdraw and VOSviewer software were combined to analyze them quantitatively and visually. Finally, it concluded that UII model was relatively reasonable and it could nicely measure the information interaction intensity and contents of enterprise web users.

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Acknowledgments

This paper is supported by Major Program of National Social Science Foundation in China (Grant No. 11&ZD152), Program of Social Science Foundation by Ministry of Education in China (Grant No. 13YJA870023) and High-level International Journal Program of Wuhan University (Grant No. 2012GSP062). This is an extended version of a paper presented at the 14th International Society of Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference, Vienna (Austria), 15–19 July 2013.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Management, Research Center for China Science Evaluation, The Center for the Studies of Information Resources, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Rongying Zhao & Bikun Chen

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  1. Rongying Zhao
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  2. Bikun Chen
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Correspondence to Bikun Chen.

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Zhao, R., Chen, B. Applying author co-citation analysis to user interaction analysis: a case study on instant messaging groups. Scientometrics 101, 985–997 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-014-1314-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-014-1314-7

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