Identifying leaders in an online cancer survivor community

Kang Zhao, Baojun Qiu, Cornelia Caragea, Dinghao Wu, Prasenjit Mitra, John Yen, Greta E. Greer, Kenneth Portier

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

Online communities are an important source of social support for cancer survivors and their informal caregivers. This research attempts to identify leaders in a popular online forum for cancer survivors and caregivers using classification techniques. We extracted user features from many different perspectives, including user-contribution, network, and semantic features. Based on these features, we further utilized the structure of the network among users and generated new neighborhood-based and cluster-based features. Classification results revealed that these features are discriminative for leader identification. Using these features, we developed a hybrid approach based on an ensemble classifier that performs better than many traditional metrics. This research has important implications for understanding and managing similar online communities.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings - 21st Workshop on Information Technologies and Systems, WITS 2011
PublisherJindal School of Management, JSOM
Pages115-120
Number of pages6
StatePublished - 2011
Event21st Workshop on Information Technologies and Systems, WITS 2011 - Shanghai, China
Duration: Dec 3 2011Dec 4 2011

Other

Other21st Workshop on Information Technologies and Systems, WITS 2011
Country/TerritoryChina
CityShanghai
Period12/3/1112/4/11

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Information Systems

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