User-level opinion propagation analysis in discussion forum threads

Abstract

Online discussions such as forums are very popular and enable participants to read other users’ previous interventions and also to express their own opinions on various subjects of interest. In online discussion forums, there is often a mixture of positive and negative opinions because users may have similar or conflicting opinions on the same subject. Therefore, it is challenging to track the flow of opinions over time in online discussion forums. Past research in the field of opinion propagation has dealt mainly with online social networks. In this paper, by contrast, we address the opinion propagation in discussion forum threads. We proposed a user-level opinion propagation analysis method in the discussion forum threads. This method establishes for a given time step whether the discussion will result in complete agreement between participants or in disparate and even contrary opinions.