Modeling Online User Relationships: A Review

Abstract

Social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook have recently emerged to play key roles in crucial aspects of our lives. In this regard, the question of how to model the relationships between users on the online interactive platform has become important because it forms a basis for abstracting a social network using social network data. Furthermore, user to user relationship definition gives a more convinient way to represent tie strength between users. The analysis of the tie strength provides a better way to gauge how important users are to one another. In this paper, we conduct a survey on the various approaches that researchers of social network analysis have applied in modelling relationships between users. Several approaches have been discussed and we have pointed out the challenges and benefits associated with some of the approaches. We have shown how the individual relationship models fit into the bigger models of social influence, which is a major subject of research on social networks. Finally we have recommended future research for some areas that do not seem to have been addressed yet.