Article: Finding Credible Information Sources in Social Networks Based on

Content and Social Structure

A task of primary importance for social network users is to decide whose updates to

subscribe to in order to maximize the relevance, credibility, and quality of the information

received. To address this problem, we conducted an experiment designed to measure

the extent to which different factors in online social networks affect both explicit and

implicit judgments of credibility. The results of the study indicate that both the topical

content of information sources and social network structure affect source credibility.

Based on these results, we designed a novel method of automatically identifying and

ranking social network users according to their relevance and expertise for a given topic.

We performed empirical studies to compare a variety of alternative ranking algorithms

and a proprietary service provided by a commercial website specifically designed for the

same purpose. Our findings show a great potential for automatically identifying and

ranking credible users for any given topic.

Kevin R. Canini, Bongwon Suh, Peter L. Pirolli. “Finding Credible Information Sources in

Social Networks Based on Content and Social Structure.” Google Scholar. IEEE

Xplore, 20, July 2019.

<https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6113088/authors#authors >