TY - JOUR
T1 - Leader identification in an online health community for cancer survivors
T2 - a social network-based classification approach
AU - Zhao, Kang
AU - Greer, Greta E.
AU - Yen, John
AU - Mitra, Prasenjit
AU - Portier, Kenneth
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2014, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
PY - 2015/11/1
Y1 - 2015/11/1
N2 - Online health communities (OHCs) are an important source of social support for cancer survivors and their informal caregivers. This research attempted to identify leaders in a popular online forum for cancer survivors and caregivers using classification techniques. We first extracted user features from many different perspectives, including contributions, network centralities, and linguistic features. Based on these features, we leveraged the structure of the social 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 implications for understanding and managing OHCs.
AB - Online health communities (OHCs) are an important source of social support for cancer survivors and their informal caregivers. This research attempted to identify leaders in a popular online forum for cancer survivors and caregivers using classification techniques. We first extracted user features from many different perspectives, including contributions, network centralities, and linguistic features. Based on these features, we leveraged the structure of the social 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 implications for understanding and managing OHCs.
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U2 - 10.1007/s10257-014-0260-5
DO - 10.1007/s10257-014-0260-5
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84948992373
SN - 1617-9846
VL - 13
SP - 629
EP - 645
JO - Information Systems and e-Business Management
JF - Information Systems and e-Business Management
IS - 4
ER -