Research Method

Handbook of Research on Methods and Techniques for Studying Virtual Communities: Paradigms and Phenomena

---

Social network analysis studies relationships between individuals and aims at identifying interesting
substructures such as communities. This type of network structure is intuitively defined as a subset of
nodes more densely linked, when compared with the rest of the network. Such dense subgraphs gather
individuals sharing similar property depending on the type of relation encoded in the graph. In this
chapter we tackle the problem of identifying communities in dynamic networks where relationships
among entities evolve over time. Meaningful patterns in such structured data must capture the strong
interactions between individuals but also their temporal relationships. We propose a pattern discovery
method to identify evolving patterns defined by constraints. In this paradigm, constraints are parameterized
by the user to drive the discovery process towards potentially interesting patterns, with the positive
side effect of achieving a more efficient computation. In the proposed approach, dense and isolated
subgraphs, defined by two user-parameterized constraints, are first computed in the dynamic network
restricted at a given time stamp. Second, the temporal evolution of such patterns is captured by associating
a temporal event types to each subgraph. We consider five basic temporal events: the formation,
dissolution, growth, diminution and stability of subgraphs from one time stamp to the next one. We
propose an algorithm that finds such subgraphs in a time series of graphs processed incrementally. The
extraction is feasible thanks to efficient pruning patterns strategies. Experimental results on real-world
data confirm the practical feasibility of our approach. We evaluate the added-value of the method, both
in terms of the relevancy of the extracted evolving patterns and in terms of scalability, on two dynamic
sensor networks and on a dynamic mobility network.

---

Availability

No copy data

Detail Information

Series Title

Handbook of Research on Methods and Techniques for Studying Virtual Communities: Paradigms and Phenomena

Call Number

-

Publisher

: IGI Global.., 2011

Collation

-

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

978-1-60960-041-9

Classification

NONE

Content Type

-

Media Type

-

Carrier Type

-

Edition

-

Subject(s)

Research Methods

Specific Detail Info

-

Statement of Responsibility

-

Other version/related

File Attachment

Comments

---

You must be logged in to post a comment