Persistent Homology Combined with Machine Learning for Social Network Activity Analysis

Currently, the rapid development of social media enables people to communicate more and more frequently in the network. Classifying user activities in social networks helps to better understand user behavior in social networks. This paper first creates an ego network for each user, encodes the highe...

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Main Authors: Zhijian Zhang, Yuqing Sun, Yayun Liu, Lin Jiang, Zhengmi Li
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2024-12-01
Series:Entropy
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Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/27/1/19
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author Zhijian Zhang
Yuqing Sun
Yayun Liu
Lin Jiang
Zhengmi Li
author_facet Zhijian Zhang
Yuqing Sun
Yayun Liu
Lin Jiang
Zhengmi Li
author_sort Zhijian Zhang
collection DOAJ
description Currently, the rapid development of social media enables people to communicate more and more frequently in the network. Classifying user activities in social networks helps to better understand user behavior in social networks. This paper first creates an ego network for each user, encodes the higher-order topological features of the ego network as persistence diagrams using persistence homology, and computes the persistence entropy. Then, based on the persistence entropy, this paper defines the Norm Entropy-NE(X) to represent the complexity of the topological features of the ego network, a larger NE(X) indicates a higher topological complexity, i.e., the higher the activity of the nodes, thus indicating the degree of activity of the nodes. The paper uses the extracted set of feature vectors to train the machine learning model to classify the users in the social network. Numerical experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of clustering quality metrics such as profile coefficients. The results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively classify social network users into different groups, which provides a good foundation for further research and application.
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institution Kabale University
issn 1099-4300
language English
publishDate 2024-12-01
publisher MDPI AG
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series Entropy
spelling doaj-art-a5cdf9d4e791432e97372dc33905789f2025-01-24T13:31:41ZengMDPI AGEntropy1099-43002024-12-012711910.3390/e27010019Persistent Homology Combined with Machine Learning for Social Network Activity AnalysisZhijian Zhang0Yuqing Sun1Yayun Liu2Lin Jiang3Zhengmi Li4Faculty of Science, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650500, ChinaFaculty of Science, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650500, ChinaFaculty of Science, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650500, ChinaFaculty of Science, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650500, ChinaFaculty of Science, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650500, ChinaCurrently, the rapid development of social media enables people to communicate more and more frequently in the network. Classifying user activities in social networks helps to better understand user behavior in social networks. This paper first creates an ego network for each user, encodes the higher-order topological features of the ego network as persistence diagrams using persistence homology, and computes the persistence entropy. Then, based on the persistence entropy, this paper defines the Norm Entropy-NE(X) to represent the complexity of the topological features of the ego network, a larger NE(X) indicates a higher topological complexity, i.e., the higher the activity of the nodes, thus indicating the degree of activity of the nodes. The paper uses the extracted set of feature vectors to train the machine learning model to classify the users in the social network. Numerical experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of clustering quality metrics such as profile coefficients. The results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively classify social network users into different groups, which provides a good foundation for further research and application.https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/27/1/19social networkspersistent homologymachine learningpersistent entropyclustering
spellingShingle Zhijian Zhang
Yuqing Sun
Yayun Liu
Lin Jiang
Zhengmi Li
Persistent Homology Combined with Machine Learning for Social Network Activity Analysis
Entropy
social networks
persistent homology
machine learning
persistent entropy
clustering
title Persistent Homology Combined with Machine Learning for Social Network Activity Analysis
title_full Persistent Homology Combined with Machine Learning for Social Network Activity Analysis
title_fullStr Persistent Homology Combined with Machine Learning for Social Network Activity Analysis
title_full_unstemmed Persistent Homology Combined with Machine Learning for Social Network Activity Analysis
title_short Persistent Homology Combined with Machine Learning for Social Network Activity Analysis
title_sort persistent homology combined with machine learning for social network activity analysis
topic social networks
persistent homology
machine learning
persistent entropy
clustering
url https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/27/1/19
work_keys_str_mv AT zhijianzhang persistenthomologycombinedwithmachinelearningforsocialnetworkactivityanalysis
AT yuqingsun persistenthomologycombinedwithmachinelearningforsocialnetworkactivityanalysis
AT yayunliu persistenthomologycombinedwithmachinelearningforsocialnetworkactivityanalysis
AT linjiang persistenthomologycombinedwithmachinelearningforsocialnetworkactivityanalysis
AT zhengmili persistenthomologycombinedwithmachinelearningforsocialnetworkactivityanalysis