Identification of patterns in blogosphere considering social positions of users and reciprocity of relations

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to identify and categorize frequent patterns describing interactions between users in social networks. We consider a social network with already identified relationships between users which evolves in time. The social network is based on the Polish blog website pertaining on socio-political issues salon24.pl. It consists of bloggers and links between them, which result from the intensity and characteristic features of posting comments. In our research, we discover patterns based on frequent and fast interactions between pairs of users. The patterns are described by the characteristics of these interactions, such as their reciprocity, the relative difference between estimates of global influence in the pairs of users participating in the discussions and time of day of the conversation. In addition, we consider the roles of system users, determined by the number of interactions initiating discussions, their frequency and the number of strong interactions in which users are involved. We take into account how many such intense conversations individual users participate in.