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arXiv · 1801.10082

Modelling structure and predicting dynamics of discussion threads in online boards

Alexey N. Medvedev·Jean-Charles Delvenne·Renaud Lambiotte
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Abstract

Internet boards are platforms for online discussions about a variety of topics. On these boards, individuals may start a new thread on a specific matter, or leave comments in an existing discussion. The resulting collective process leads to the formation of `discussion trees', where nodes represent a post and comments, and an edge represents a `reply-to' relation. The structure of discussion trees has been analysed in previous works, but only from a static perspective. In this paper, we focus on their structural and dynamical properties by modelling their formation as a self-exciting Hawkes process. We first study a Reddit dataset to show that the structure of the trees resemble those produced by a Galton-Watson process with a special root offspring distribution. The dynamical aspect of the model is then used to predict future commenting activity and the final size of a discussion tree. We compare the efficiency of our approach with previous works and show its superiority for the prediction of the dynamics of discussions.

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Alexey N. Medvedev, Jean-Charles Delvenne, Renaud Lambiotte. 2020-06-04. Modelling structure and predicting dynamics of discussion threads in online boards. https://doi.org/10.1093/comnet%2Fcny010

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