Journal article
Finding influential users of online health communities: a new metric based on sentiment influence
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA, Vol.21(E2), pp.212-218
10/01/2014
DOI: 10.1136/amiajnl-2013-002282
PMCID: PMC4173171
PMID: 24449805
Abstract
Objective Online health communities (OHCs) have become a major source of support for people with health problems. This research tries to improve our understanding of social influence and to identify influential users in OHCs. The outcome can facilitate OHC management, improve community sustainability, and eventually benefit OHC users.
Methods Through text mining and sentiment analysis of users' online interactions, the research revealed sentiment dynamics in threaded discussions. A novel metric-the number of influential responding replies-was proposed to directly measure a user's ability to affect the sentiment of others.
Results Using the dataset from a popular OHC, the research demonstrated that the proposed metric is highly effective in identifying influential users. In addition, combining the metric with other traditional measures further improves the identification of influential users.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Finding influential users of online health communities: a new metric based on sentiment influence
- Creators
- Kang Zhao - University of IowaJohn Yen - Pennsylvania State UniversityGreta Greer - American Cancer SocietyBaojun Qiu - eBay, Inc., San Jose, California, USAPrasenjit Mitra - Pennsylvania State UniversityKenneth Portier - American Cancer Society
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA, Vol.21(E2), pp.212-218
- Publisher
- Oxford Univ Press
- DOI
- 10.1136/amiajnl-2013-002282
- PMID
- 24449805
- PMCID
- PMC4173171
- ISSN
- 1067-5027
- eISSN
- 1527-974X
- Number of pages
- 7
- Grant note
- Pennsylvania State University American Cancer Society
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 10/01/2014
- Academic Unit
- Business Analytics
- Record Identifier
- 9984380543202771
Metrics
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