Title: A qualitative method to find influencers using similarity-based approach in the blogosphere

Authors: Eunyoung Moon; Sangki Han

Addresses: Graduate School of Culture Technology, KAIST, 373-1 Gusung-Dong, Yusung-Gu, Daejeon 305-750, Republic of Korea. ' Graduate School of Culture Technology, KAIST, 373-1 Gusung-Dong, Yusung-Gu, Daejeon 305-750, Republic of Korea

Abstract: With huge popularity, blogosphere has become a significant channel of information propagation. Accordingly, internet users search for information in the blogosphere and read blog posts before making decision and/or buying brand-new products. Although current blog systems rank |A-List| bloggers, they are not necessarily influential. To differentiate influential bloggers from popular bloggers, we present important groundwork for identifying influential bloggers by weighting readers based on homophily and vulnerability with bloggers. We develop the quantifying influence model (QIM), which attempts to measure the influence score of bloggers. QIM is composed of two components: 1) interpersonal similarity presents the interaction among bloggers and like-minded readers; 2) degree of information propagation represents how many readers a blogger has, where the readers diffuse the blog posts via scrapping engagements. To evaluate QIM, we conduct experiments with empirical data from the Naver blog, the largest blog service in Korea. Our study shows that weighting blog social ties can differentiate influential bloggers from popular bloggers, and what make bloggers influential or popular.

Keywords: influencers; popularity; homophily; blogosphere; blogs; blog posts; influential bloggers; vulnerability; interpersonal similarity; information propagation; Korea; popular bloggers; blog social ties.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSCCPS.2011.043604

International Journal of Social Computing and Cyber-Physical Systems, 2011 Vol.1 No.1, pp.56 - 78

Published online: 21 Feb 2015 *