Web Communities and Social Networks

Modeling and empirically evaluating user behavior in web communities can identify methods to improve user participation and content quality. In these web communities, users produce, rate and share content, as well as find others with similar interests.

a stochastic model of voting on the news aggregator site Digg:
T. Hogg and K. Lerman, Stochastic Models of User-Contributory Web Sites, 2009
user behavior on the political discussion site Essembly:
- diversity of users and content:
  T. Hogg and G. Szabo, Diversity of User Activity and Content Quality in Online Communities, 2009
- uses of link types distinguishing friends from people with similar or different political views:
  M. J. Brzozowski, T. Hogg and G. Szabo, Friends and Foes: Ideological Social Networking, 2008
motivations for contribution to enterprise social media (i.e., use of blogs within companies):
M. J. Brzozowski, T. Sandholm and T. Hogg, Effects of Feedback and Peer Pressure on Contributions to Enterprise Social Media, 2009