Information Organization Patterns from Online Users in a Social Network

Abstract

Recent years have seen the rise of user-generated contents (UGCs) in online social media. Diverse UGC sources and information overload are making it increasingly difficult to satisfy personalized information needs. To organize UGCs in a user-centered way, we should not only map them based on textual topics but also link them with users and even user communities. We propose a multi-dimensional framework to organize information by connecting UGCs, users, and user communities. First, we use a topic model to generate a topic hierarchy from UGCs. Second, an author-topic model is applied to learn user interests. Third, user communities are detected through a label propagation algorithm. Finally, a multi-dimensional information organization pattern is formulated based on similarities among the topic hierarchies of UGCs, user interests, and user communities. The results reveal that: 1) our proposed framework can organize information from multiple sources in a user-centered way; 2) hierarchical topic structures can provide comprehensive and in-depth topics for users; and, 3) user communities are efficient in helping people to connect with others who have similar interests.