Positive and Negative Relationships in On-Line Social Networks

Speaker
Jon Kleinberg
Tisch University Professor, Computer Science, Cornell University

When
-

Where
Room 322 Conference Center-GSIA Tepper School

Description

The social networks in many on-line applications encode a mixture of positive (friendly) and negative (antagonistic) relationships, but the bulk of research on these networks to date has focused almost exclusively on the positive interpretations of the links. We discuss how the interplay between positive and negative relationships affects the overall functioning of on-line social networks, and we connect our analysis to theories of signed networks from social psychology. In addition to providing a perspective for reasoning about the underlying networks and applications, this analysis provides one of the first large-scale evaluations of these theories using on-line datasets. We find in particular that structural balance theory approximately captures certain of the underlying effects, but that it is also at odds with some of the fundamental phenomena we observe—particularly related to the evolving, directed nature of the networks. We develop an alternate theory of status that provides insights into the mechanisms underlying these phenomena.

Jon will also be receiving the Katayanagi Emerging Leadership Prize at CMU. The Presentation and Lecture are Thursday, Jan. 21, 4:00pm in Gates and Hillman Centers 4401. The abstract for this talk is here.

Speaker's Bio

Jon Kleinberg is the Tisch University Professor, Computer Science Department, at Cornell University. His research focuses on issues at the interface of networks and information, with an emphasis on the social and information networks that underpin the Web and other on-line media. His work has been supported by an NSF Career Award, an ONR Young Investigator Award, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a Packard Foundation Fellowship, a Sloan Foundation Fellowship, and grants from Google, Yahoo!, and the NSF. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Speaker's Website
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/

Host
Robert Kraut