Social Influence Study in Online Networks: A Three-Level Review

Social network analysis (SNA) views social relationships in terms of network theory consisting of nodes and ties. Nodes are the individual actors within the networks; ties are the relationships between the actors. In the sequel, we will use the term node and individual interchangeably. The relationship could be friendship, communication, trust, etc. These reason is that these relationships and ties are driven by social in uence, which is the most important phenomenon that distinguishes social network from other networks. In this paper, we present an overview of the representative research work in social in uence study. Those studies can be classi ed into three levels, namely individual, community, and network levels. Throughout the study, we are able to unveil a series of research directions in future and possible applications based on the state-of-the-art study.