Generative models of online discussion threads: state of the art and research challenges


Date

2017

Publication Type

Journal Article

ETH Bibliography

yes

Citations

Altmetric

Data

Abstract

Online discussion in form of written comments is a core component of many social media platforms. It has attracted increasing attention from academia, mainly because theories from social sciences can be explored at an unprecedented scale. This interest has led to the development of statistical models which are able to characterize the dynamics of threaded online conversations. In this paper, we review research on statistical modeling of online discussions, in particular, we describe current generative models of the structure and growth of discussion threads. These are parametrized network formation models that are able to generate synthetic discussion threads that reproduce certain features of the real discussions present in different online platforms. We aim to provide a clear overview of the state of the art and to motivate future work in this relevant research field.

Publication status

published

Editor

Book title

Volume

8 (1)

Pages / Article No.

15

Publisher

Springer

Event

Edition / version

Methods

Software

Geographic location

Date collected

Date created

Subject

Online discussion; computer-mediated communication; Discussion threads; Computational social science; Social media

Organisational unit

Notes

Funding

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