Identification and characterisation of Facebook user profiles considering interaction aspects

Pedro Henrique B. Ruas, Alan D. Machado, Michelle C. Silva, Magali R. G. Meireles, Ana Maria P. Cardoso, Luis E. Zárate and Cristiane N. Nobre

Behaviour and Information Technology, 2019, vol. 38, issue 8, 858-872

Abstract: The great number of social network users and the expansion of this kind of tool in the last years demand the storage of a great volume of information regarding user behaviour. In this article, we utilise interaction records from Facebook users and metrics from complex networks study, to identify different user behaviours using clustering techniques. We found three different user profiles regarding interactions performed in the social network: viewer, participant and content producer. Moreover, the groups we found were characterised by the C4.5 decision-tree algorithm. The 'viewer' mainly observes what happens in the network. The ‘participant’ interacts more often with the content, getting a higher value of closeness centrality. Therefore, users with a participant profile are responsible, for example, for the faster transmission of information in the virtual environment, a crucial function for the Facebook social network. We noted too that ‘content producer’ users had a greater quantity of publications in their pages, leading to a superior degree of input interactions than the other two profiles. Finally, we also verify that the profiles are not mutually exclusive, that is, the user of a profile can at determined moment perform the behaviour of another profile.

Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1080/0144929X.2019.1566498

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