Studying online conversations in the Korean blogosphere: A network approach

Studying online conversations in the Korean blogosphere: A network approach

Anatoliy Gruzd ([email protected])

Dalhousie University, Canada

Chung Joo Chung ([email protected])

State University of New York at Buffalo, USA

Han Woo PARK ([email protected])

YeungNam University, Korea

International Sunbelt Social Network ConferenceRiva del Garda, Italy

July 3, 2010


Automated Discovery of Online Networks

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What content-based features of online interactions help to uncover nodes and ties between online participants?

Automated Discovery of Social Networks

among Blog Readers/Commentators

?



3

ICTA - Online Tool for Social Network Discovery http://TextAnalytics.net

Anatoliy Gruzd ([email protected]) Automated Discovery of Online Networks 5

Dataset

OhMyNews – popular blogging website in Korea

Single blog authored by 방짜 (bangzza) http://blog.ohmynews.com/bangzza

~1,000 comments (April 2008 - April 2009)

http://blog.ohmynews.com/bangzza


Sample blog post and comments


Automated Discovery of Social NetworksChain (reply-to) method

Visualized by CMU ORA



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Automated Discovery of Social Networks Name Network Approach

Method Connect the sender to people mentioned in the message

Connect people whose names co-occur in the same message(s)

Discovered Tie(s)

Ann -> Steve Ann -> Natasha

Steve <-> Natasha

FROM: Ann

“Steve and Natasha, I couldn't wait to see your site.

I knew it was going to [be] awesome!”

This approach looks for personal names in the content of the comments to identify social connections between online participants.



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• Main Communicative Functions of Personal Names (Leech, 1999)

– getting attention and identifying addressee

– maintaining and reinforcing social relationships

• Names are “one of the few textual carriers of identity” in discussions on the web (Doherty, 2004)

• Their use is crucial for the creation and maintenance of a sense of community (Ubon, 2005)

Automated Discovery of Social Networks

Name Network Approach


Network representation of blog comments



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1 난 (I) 2 사진쟁이 (Photographer) 3 그래서 (and, so)4 테츠 (Tetz)5 방짜 (Bangzza)6 댓글 (comment)7 녹두 (Nokdu)8 ㅋㅋ (, : ))9 좀 (a little, a bit)10 사람 (people)

Among 10 nodes, only 2, 4, 5 and 7 are NANEs or IDs of participants in the Bangzza blog

1

2 3

5

67

10

8

94

Semi-automated network evaluation


Clues suggesting that a word is likely to be a nickname

context words such as "님 " = an honorific or "씨 " = Mr./Ms

full name, which is almost always three characters

punctuation indicative of someone being addressed (e.g., “/” or “:”)

combination of characters (Korean, English and/or Chinese), symbols (e.g., underscores, hyphens) and numbers

patterns indicative of non-native words

phonetic koreanization of English (e.g., "미디어몽골 " = mediamogul = Media Mogul)

phonetic romanization of Korean (e.g. “jihwaja” = 지화자 )


Words that are NOT likely to be used as a nickname

a word candidate is a phrase

e.g., if the “FROM” field is used more like a subject line (possible indicators include white spaces and length)

a word candidate consists of a single character (e.g., “a” or “ㄱ” )

a word candidate consists of netspeak

emoticons (e.g. “=_=”)

slang and abbreviations (e.g., using “2MB” to refer to the former Korean president)

onomatopoeia (e.g., "ㅋㅋ” = heehee, "하하” = haha)


Words that are NOT likely to be used as a nickname (2)

a word candidate appears more than one time in the comment

a word candidate consists of random characters (e.g. "ㅁㄴㅇㄹ " or “asdf”)

a word candidate is a short, conversational word or phrase (e.g., "나 " = me,"아이고 " = oh no, "그래서 " = so/therefore)

a word candidate is a common word or idea in the given context/topic (e.g "대한민국 " = Republic of Korea, "쥐체사상 " = a newly created word used to refer to political fanatics)


Conclusion

A network representation of comments posted to a blog makes it much easier to analyze social interactions among online participants

Even in a blog dominated by mostly anonymous and argumentative commentators, a community can still emerge

Suggested future improvements to our network discovery algorithm.


Acknowledgments

Jaeeun Yoo at the University of Toronto for her help with the data analysis

The project is in part supported by

Technology

Studying online conversations in the Korean blogosphere: A network approach