Original Article

International Journal of Electrical Engineering

& Education
Conical SNA using fuzzy 0(0) 1–16
! The Author(s) 2021
k-medoids based on Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
user experience DOI: 10.1177/0020720920988490
journals.sagepub.com/home/ije

Poonam Rani1 , MPS Bhatia1 and

Devendra K Tayal2

Abstract
The paper presents an intelligent approach for the comparison of social networks
through a cone model by using the fuzzy k-medoids clustering method. It makes use
of a geometrical three-dimensional conical model, which astutely represents the user
experience views. It uses both the static as well as the dynamic parameters of social
networks. In this, we propose an algorithm that investigates which social network is
more fruitful. For the experimental results, the proposed work is employed on the data
collected from students from different universities through the Google forms, where
students are required to rate their experience of using different social networks on
different scales.

Keywords
Fuzzy k-medoids clustering, social networks, social network analysis

Introduction
Social media is a communicative and influential platform that facilitates users in
sharing their ideas, information, interests and opinions. A social network is a
group of social entities linked by diverse kinds of relationships among them.
Social networks provide the easiest common platforms to stay connected with
colleagues, classmates, clients, friends, families or others known and unknown

1
Computer Science and Engineering, Netaji Subhas University of Technology, Delhi, India
2
Computer Science and Engineering, Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University for Women, Delhi, India
Corresponding author:
Poonam Rani, Computer Science and Engineering, Netaji Subhas University of Technology, Delhi, India.
Emails: pooam.rani.nsit@gmail.com; poonam.rani@nsut.ac.in
2 International Journal of Electrical Engineering & Education 0(0)

ones globally. Social network analysis (SNA)1–3 is “a distinct research perspective,

which focuses on relationships among the social entities, and the patterns and
implications of these relationships, mainly within social and behavioral sciences”.
The comparison, analysis, visualization, and quantification of social network inter-
actions or relationships are potential issues in social network analysis as explored
in our earlier work.4 Some of the famous current social media platforms are
WhatsApp, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Quora, and Flickr, etc.
Every platform is similar to others in some manner and differs from others in
some other manner.
Facebook is a great tool to stay connected with family and friends. By using it,
we can post or share messages, photos, and videos with everyone. We can com-
ment, like or dislike posts. It gives a good insight into a person’s personal and
social life. The reactions like Laugh, Sad, Like, Love, Wow and Angry on different
posts are the main parameters to quantify and predict the relationship between its
users, as explored in our recent work.5 Instagram is also a good tool where we can
share photos, videos, and stories privately or publicly. It also gives an additional
feature of photos filtration. Its users can attach hashtags to their posts. These users
can even link their photos to other content also. Google Hangouts is another tool
for messaging, video chats, SMS, etc. It allows conversation with more than one
person. Flickr is a photo-sharing or video hosting platform. It is a social network
where users upload photos for others to see. LinkedIn is the topmost professional
networking site existing today. It facilitates a way to link with other professionals
and follow them. It also helps us to get job offers and business solutions. All sorts
of job listing are posted by employers every day. Quora is a question and answer
platform where we can ask questions. The answers are provided by professionals
and experts in that field. Other users can collaborate by editing questions or
suggesting answers to questions asked already. It is a great platform to gain and
share knowledge. Twitter is a social network microblogging platform that permits
its users to broadcast messages called tweets of a maximum of 140 characters. In
this, we can send out messages about events as they happen with immediate feed-
back. WhatsApp is the easiest and fastest way to send instant messages, images,
and videos. By using it we can do audio or video calling also. Today, more than 1
billion world users use it. It is free and very simple to use. It provides safe, secure,
reliable messaging audio and video calling on phones globally.
A user chooses out of the above social networks depending on their importance,
experience and requirements. These social networks help people to meet them
online, share and express their ideas and real experiences by understanding the
circumstances in a much better way. These social networks have variable features.
Most of the time, there is a need to investigate their role, importance, and out-
comes in our daily lives. It also helps to use these social networks for different
applications. For this purpose, it becomes essential to analyze, classify, differenti-
ate and compare these social networks from different angles. We have already
explored this in our work.6,7 In our earlier work, we have introduced a
“Soft computing SNA approach”8 to analyze the attributes and relationships of
Rani et al 3

social networks using the uncertainty factor. But the above papers lack user expe-
rience views. So, this paper presents a scalable approach for the comparison of
social networks through a geometrical three-dimensional conical model by using
the fuzzy k-medoids clustering method. It astutely represents the user experience
views by using a 3 D cone. It uses both static and dynamic attributes of social
networks. So, it presents an algorithm that investigates which social network is
more fruitful. For experimental results, the proposed work is employed on data
collected from students through the google forms, where the students are required
to rate their different experiences on different social networks using different scales
from (1–10). Our proposed work can also be helpful in anomaly detection in
dynamic and static social networks.9
The paper is written in the consecutive sections. Section one provides an over-
view and importance of our work. Section two gives the related research work
along with the gaps. Section three gives an overview and importance of fuzzy-K-
medoids-clustering. Section four proposes an intelligent algorithm based on the
user experience view on different parameters of different social networks. Section
five computes the results for Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, and Instagram after
applying survey data. Lastly, section six gives the conclusion.

Related work
Papers6,7,10–14 focused on comparing social networks. They have explored different
methodologies depending on the applications used by them. This comparison task
greatly helps us to explore and investigate the role of social networks in day to day
life. This task helps us to address the questions like which social network is supe-
rior, how these social networks are used in spreading things from one user to
others, etc. Faust10 used the closeness of relations and similarities in constituting
structure to compare social networks. He has given the comparison based on the
size of the social networks using the edges and nodes in a network. He has found
the similarities among the social network structure using the triad census only. He
takes a collection of 51 networks. In this, network comparison is done using the
triad census. He has used the local properties, network density, and dyad distri-
bution to explain the triad census. So, he has presented the comparison task of
diverse social networks by incorporating the pivotal metrics, namely, triad cen-
suses, size and density only. Perkins et al.11 gave “the comparison of social net-
works derived from ecological data”. In this, the transmission of diseases between
rodents is studied by considering it as a social network by using two methods
“radio-tracking and capture-mark-recapture”. They have used the contact net-
works of rodents. They have used the methodology of “radio-tracking and cap-
ture-mark-recapture” on rodents. They have used both capture–mark–recapture
and radio-tracking at the same time on different sets. They have concluded that the
capture–mark–recapture networks are more revealing when rodent density is high
and radio-tracking are more revealing networks when the density is low. In this,
researchers have taken into account a very specific case of social networks, that is,
4 International Journal of Electrical Engineering & Education 0(0)

of rodents and used the measures viz. betweenness and closeness centrality meas-
ures, average contact rate, connectedness score in their research work. A more
general way to do social networks comparison is needed. The probability of a
rodent getting affected when coming in contact with an infected rodent is tough
to calculate with good precision and hence the analysis is based on a very specific
population of species. Burns and Lippold12 have presented “a comparison between
social networks of adults with intellectual disability and those with the physical
disability”. The authors have mainly tried to directly contrast the relations of
people in social networks, where people have Intellectual Disabilities (IDs) and
Physical Disabilities (PDs). So, they have taken into account the factors viz. - life
experiences and functional and social support, based on some statistical measure-
ments. These parameters are vital to investigate the social behavior of elements in
the social network. The significant finding is that the PDs group has considerably
more elements in their social network. They have analyzed a very specific example
where social and functional support networks as well as life experiences, are ana-
lyzed for a group of 47 people. One straight forward limitation which is seen is that
the survey has been done on a very tiny group and thus the results do not seem to
be general enough. Psychological factors are considered with deep technicalities
but mathematical factor has been left behind in the paper. Johnson et al.13 inves-
tigated “the comparison of the email networks and the survey-based social net-
works in a bank”. In this, authors have performed an exploratory study of a bank
to distinguish the structure of email networks with communication, advice-seeking
networks and friendship networks. They have explored employees’ ego networks.
They have exploited exponential random graph social network models and found
that “off-line social networks are strongly shaped by gender, tenure, and hierar-
chical boundaries”. The task of these boundaries in the email network is very
weak. The data used comprises employee emails, email messages and a review of
ego networks of the employees. The data used was taken from the Central
European Bank. They have mapped the structure of communities relying on
online data. The email data was collected for 3 weeks and a sociometric survey
of about 760 employees is conducted. Recently, we have presented three
approaches to the same research work.6,7,14 In the first approach, a “quantitative
solution using OWA operator”6 is proposed. In this, SNA is performed using a
quantitative approach. The comparison is done on different parameters lying on
three different levels - network, group and node level. For accuracy, we have
assigned weights to each parameter according to its importance. The operator
that we have used for doing the same is “Ordered Weighted Average” (OWA).15
In this, one quantitative value is calculated for every social network. With this
value, a comparison is made. We have carried out the analysis on diverse social
network data sets to remove any bias if any. In this, we have selected six important
metrics of social networks to have high accuracy with low complexity. So, this
approach employs a systematic quantitative approach with a graphical approach
using Gephi.16 This approach is much better as compared to the previous ones.
This is because it has assigned importance to all parameters and never discard a
Rani et al 5

parameter for analysis. As social networks are highly uncertain, so this uncertainty
needs to be captured. We have tackled this uncertainty in our second approach for
improving the results in social networks comparison. In the second approach, we
have proposed one “qualitative solution using fuzzy membership function”,7 where
the uncertainty parameter is captured. This approach is more intuitive and more
human-readable as parameters are defined using fuzzy sets.17,18 This approach has
effectively achieved the comparison task on diverse data sets. So, it establishes a
fuzzy approach to compare social networks that suit better than any of the clas-
sical approaches. The above papers6,7 do not take into consideration the user point
of view of respective social networks, which we have addressed in our proposed
work. The user view parameter is missing in other previous papers10–13 also. So, in
our third approach user view has been focused. In this, we have proposed one
simplest idealness parameter to compare social networks.14 It has used the fuzzy k-
means clustering. It has applied only on two social networks, namely, Facebook
and WhatsApp social networks. The problem with this approach is that outliers
and user noise are there. So, our new work has proposed a more generalized and
scalable methodology based fuzzy k-medoids19 by incorporating user experience
view. Contrary to the fuzzy k-means approach, fuzzy k-medoids provides more
accuracy as it chooses data-points as centers (medoids). This approach gives more
accuracy as compared to our last approach14 shown in the experimental section.
For analysis purposes, we have implemented our work on the dataset gained via
google forms from students on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and WhatsApp. In
the google forms, the students give ratings to their experience on various attributes
of social networks in consideration. So, this research work focuses on user expe-
rience and considers both dynamic and static parameters that are missing in pre-
vious papers. So, it enhances the crediblility of our research work. The experiments
result on four social networks in section five demonstrate the excellence of
WhatsApp over other social networks, especially in the education field.

Fuzzy k-medoids clustering

Clustering20,21 classifies and groups data points with similar attributes or features
into one class or cluster. Fuzzy clustering22,23 is an unsupervised approach that
classifies data points into different clusters. This approach seems practical as data
points can lie in multiple clusters with a membership degree.24 In fuzzy cluster-
ing,25 data points at edges cannot be compelled to lie in a single class, instead,
partial membership degrees between 0 and 1 can be assigned to them so that they
can belong to multiple classes. On the other hand, fuzzy k-means26,27 is the widely
used algorithm in clustering and uses the concept of fuzzy partitioning so that a
data point can lie in multiple clusters with certain membership degree. With fuzzy
k-means clustering, there are always some outliers as the algorithm always starts
by taking some random initial center, even where it does not make any logic. To
handle these outliers fuzzy k-medoids19,28 is introduced. A medoid is the object of a
cluster that has minimal average dissimilarity compared to all other objects in that
6 International Journal of Electrical Engineering & Education 0(0)

cluster. It uses the centrally located point in the cluster. Compared to the fuzzy k-
means algorithm, fuzzy k-medoids selects data-points as the centers (medoids) and
performs on the generalized form of the Manhattan distance.
In fuzzy k-medoids clustering, we use Manhattan distance because this metric
gives more robust results as compared to the fuzzy k-means which uses the con-
ventional distance formula (Euclidean distance). So, if the cluster1 centre has
coordinates P1 ðx1 ; y1 ; z1 Þ and cluster2 centre has coordinates P2 ðx2 ; y2 ; z2 Þ; then
Manhattan distance between point Pðx; y; zÞ and P1 ðx1 ; y1 ; z1 Þ is d1 which is
given by:

d ¼ jx  x1 j þ jy  y1 j þ jz  z1 j (1)

Similarly, we can find Manhattan distance d2 between point Pðx; y; zÞ and

P2 ðx2 ; y2 ; z2 Þ using equation (1). The membership of point Pðx; y; zÞ lying in clus-
ter 1 is defined as follows:

lP ð1Þ ¼ d2 =ðd1 þ d2 Þ (2)

& membership of point Pðx; y; zÞ lying in cluster 2 is defined as follows:

lP ð2Þ ¼ d1 =ðd1 þ d2 Þ (3)

In this, fuzzy-k-medoids membership degree of all points is calculated first using

equations (1) and (2), then medoids are chosen as the points with the maximum
membership degree value in each cluster. So, in the case of fuzzy k-medoids, out-
liers and user noise are also tackled. Therefore, fuzzy k-medoids is better than
fuzzy k-means and it is also shown in the experiment section of this paper. Fuzzy
k-medoids reduces the sum of pairwise dissimilarities rather than the sum of
squared Euclidean distances. So, we use fuzzy k-medoids clustering that captures
uncertainty also. In this paper, we perform fuzzy k-medoids clustering to classify
and group like-minded individuals on the 3 D plane.

Proposed work
This section proposes 3 things –i). Comparison parameters, ii) Conical three-
dimensional geometrical model and iii) Algorithm that compares multiple social
networks with multiple parameters based on user experience on these parameters.
It uses linear scales for different parameters and features that ascertain users’
inclination towards the related social networks as well as the influence of this
social network in their holistic development. So, we use fuzzy k-medoids clustering
to represent our findings on a three dimensional (3 D) geometrical cone model
where it is easy to visualize why a particular social network is better than the
Rani et al 7

others. The fuzzy k-medoids clustering is done to classify and group like-minded
individuals on the 3 D plane.

Proposed parameters
The proposed work uses two types of proposed parameters - static and dynamic
for each social network. We collect the values of these static and dynamic param-
eters through Google forms. We use the same set of parameters for all social
networks for which we want to draw a comparison. We use separate forms for
each social network with the same set of questions. These proposed parameters are
defined as follows:

Static parameters. These parameters with a constant score from 1 to 10 are given
ratings based on user opinion based on user experience on that parameter. The
static parameters are defined as follows:

a. Safety - Safety refers to the protection from risk or danger. Nowadays, safety is
of extreme importance as more and more people have access to social network-
ing sites. Through the survey, we asked the users how safe they feel on the
respective social network and use their rating for further computation. For
example, WhatsApp has a high safety score as compared to Facebook because
WhatsApp has end-to-end encryption in the transfer of information. On the
other hand, Facebook doesn’t have such an encryption scheme. As a result,
there are relatively more chances of data theft on Facebook relative to
WhatsApp and therefore, users feel safer on WhatsApp.
b. Connectivity - Connectivity is defined as the connection between social network-
ing users when they feel good while communicating with the connected people or
groups in which they lie. In more formal terms, connectivity is the degree cen-
trality of a social network, that is, how many neighbors a node in the social
network has. For example, social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook have a
higher connectivity score as compared to WhatsApp because LinkedIn and
Facebook social networks require more accessible names and affiliations of a
person whereas WhatsApp requires more personal aspects like phone numbers
of people.
c. Instantaneity - Instantaneity, in layman’s terms, means how quickly a person can
connect to other members of a social network. Therefore, the higher the instan-
taneity, the lower is the time required for a connection to be established. This
includes the speed of spreading information on a social network as assessed by
the user. For example, if a person has to send a message to another person in his
social network, he/she will prefer WhatsApp as compared to Facebook and
LinkedIn, because messaging on WhatsApp is quicker and more user-friendly
than the other two social networks describe above. As a result, WhatsApp will
have a higher instantaneity score.
8 International Journal of Electrical Engineering & Education 0(0)

d. Easy Use - It measures how easy it is to use the social network by anticipated
users. This shows the potential ease of user interaction and comfort for any
social network. For example, WhatsApp is much easier to use because of an
easier user interface as compared to relatively complex social networks like
Snapchat. Hence, WhatsApp wins for this parameter’s score. It also includes
parameter - how easy it is for the transfer of Files. It governs which social
network is preferable for sharing photos, contacts, videos or documents. For
example, when it comes to sharing documents, contact, and videos, WhatsApp
has a higher score. On the other hand, the sharing of photos is easier on
Instagram. Therefore, overall WhatsApp wins for this parameter’s score as
WhatsApp is suitable and efficient for the transfer of files.
e. Friendliness for new users - It determines the power of a social network to assist
users in building new connections. Mathematically, it means creating new edges
between existing users. For example, Facebook is much better in connecting to
new individuals, while WhatsApp is not so good.
f. Benefits - This is the factor that analyzes how beneficial a particular social
network is to an individual. The benefits can be further classified as:
g. Personal Benefits - Social Networks like Facebook and Twitter are really good
when it comes to sharing of educational blogs, news stories and articles.
h. Professional Benefits - Social Networks like LinkedIn have a higher value for
professional benefits as compared to other social networks.

Dynamic parameters. These parameters possess dynamic score and are given ratings
based on user opinion. Normalization has been performed to compare them with
static parameters. The dynamic parameters are defined as follows:

1. Time spent - This parameter represents the period for which a user is logged in
to a social network. Social networks having more features are bound to have a
higher rating with regards to this parameter.
2. Number of times opened – This is similar to “Time spent”, the number of times a
website or social networking app is opened by a user that gives a good indica-
tion of how accustomed the user is to that social network.

Apart from the above parameters, other parameters like personality character-
istics can also be used for social network analysis.29 However, we are focusing only
on static and dynamic parameters in this paper.

Proposed geometrical model

The section proposes a 3-Dimensional conical model. In this, the cone contains
multiple strands (or line segments) at some given angles from the axis and rotated
from 0 to 360 degrees. These multiple strands on the cone denote multiple param-
eters we have taken for the analysis. We select eight variables and use eight uni-
form angles from 0 to 360 degrees to get 8 outer strands of the cone to represent
Rani et al 9

Figure 1. 3-Dimensional conical model.

each variable. The base of the cone has a very low score (treated as 0), whereas the
apex of the cone has a very high score (treated as 10) as shown in Figure 1. So, the
conical model is an 8-tuple model. Here 8-tuple means 8 values corresponding to
each parameter defined in the above subsection. We use this model to shape all the
responses of users. The fundamental advantages of the conical model are the
following:

• 3D model allows us to cluster more efficiently

• Because of the shape of the cone, the farther it is from the base, the better is the
rating on that parameter
Hence, after plotting, we can easily understand the inclination of a user towards
a social network according to the corresponding parameter.

Proposed algorithm
Firstly, we plot all points on each of the strands that indicate the score according
to user experience to a particular parameter respectively. Secondly, we perform k-
medoids clustering for each parameter to classify and group like-minded individ-
uals on the 3 D plane. For example, the opinion of a group of people for a social
network like WhatsApp might be negative, so they will be grouped nearer to the
base of the cone. On the other hand, another group may have a positive opinion
and maybe grouped nearer to the apex of the cone. In this, fuzzy k-medoids clus-
tering, we use Manhattan distance as it gives more robust results as compared to
the fuzzy k-mean. It can be used for the high dimensional dataset with low time
complexity as discussed in paper.18 Thirdly, we calculate the “Idealness Score” for
each social network that we use to carry out the comparison task of the social
networks.
We propose “Idealness Score” (IDS) using two major components – (i)
“Closeness Score” ðCLSÞ and (ii) “Height from the base” (HFB) as follows:
IDS ¼ aCLS þ bHFB (4)
10 International Journal of Electrical Engineering & Education 0(0)

We define these two components as follows:

(i) Closeness Score ðCLSÞ: Closeness score is the sum of the clustering efficiencies
for all parameters for a social network. The more is the closeness score for the
social network, the greater is the agreement of the user for the social network.
(ii) Height from the Base ðHFBÞ: Height from the Base is the average of the height
from the base for all parameters for a social network. The greater is the height
of a social network from the base of the cone (z-coordinate), the better is a
socialnetwork.It uses scores provided by user depending on their experience.It
is computed as follows using three clusters.

Height from the base for parameter ¼ (Fractions of points in cluster1) * (z-coor-
dinate of centre of cluster1) þ (Fractions of points in cluster2) * (z-coordinate of
centre of cluster2) þ (Fractions of points in cluster3) * (z-coordinate of centre of
cluster3).
Also, there are coefficients a and b which are multiplied with CLS and HFB
respectively to obtain the value of IDS such that a þ b ¼ 1. b which is multiplied by
HFB the depends on how consistent the opinions of users are. Greater is the con-
sistency, the better is the result obtained from the HFB. Thus, beta is the clustering
efficiency. It is a measure of how efficiently clustering has taken place. a is defined
as one minus b. It is the measure of how spread out are the points. For simplicity
one can take a ¼ b ¼ 1=2. Finally, we use this score to compare different social
networks. This score is a quantitative global parameter for each social network,
which we getafter the analysis of all static and dynamic parameters. The proposed
Algorithm 1 illustrates all steps of the social network comparison with “m”
number of social networks. It is self-explanatory.

Experimental results
For experimental results, we use a diverse population to ensure the generality and
scalability of results. Clafferty30 focused on providing a social networking envi-
ronment to students. They concluded that social networking environment is an
effective and valuable approach for students. We use a sample of four hundred
students from different universities in New Delhi, India. We collect data by using
Google survey forms. In the survey, we have analyzed the four popular social
networks - Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and WhatsApp. We provide a separate
questionnaire for each social network that asks the same set of questions. We
calculate the Idealness Score (IDS) for all parameters as proposed and discussed
in the last section. The Idealness scores for all four social networks are mentioned
in Table 1. From Table 1, we conclude the Idleness of WhatsApp is much better
than the other three social networks. We also use fuzzy k-means for comparison.
The comparison of clustering efficiency with fuzzy k-means and fuzzy k-medoids
Rani et al 11

Table 1. Idealness score for all four social networks.

Social network Idealness score

Facebook 2.400282
WhatsApp 7.379502
Instagram 2.547900
LinkedIn 1.407468

with the same data set is depicted in Table 2. When the proposed algorithms are
run on fuzzy k-means and fuzzy k-medoids, fuzzy k-medoids has higher accuracy
than fuzzy k-means. The efficiency of the clustering algorithm is calculated by the
reciprocal of the sum of the distances of every point from its respective cluster
center. It shows that for each social network, fuzzy k-medoids provides better
clustering efficiency as compared to fuzzy k-means. So, it is seen that clustering
by fuzzy k-medoids is more immune to outliers and hence more ideal in SNA.
The representations obtained after plotting the opinions of the students on the
cone and projecting it on the 2-Dimensional plane are shown in figures from
Figures 2 to 5. Here, the cone is shown in the open position. So, an open cone
is more convenient to depict and visualize the all parameters score simultaneously.
The size of the circle for a parameter directly depends on the frequency of users’
opinions for that parameter. The more frequently a response occurs, the larger will
be its dot or circle. Thus, the larger circle of each color and near to the apex of the
cone are desired for better results.
The comparison of all social networks based on the above parameters using the
multiple bar graph is shown below in Figure 6.
The above representations clearly show the eminence of WhatsApp over other
social networks. This is also supported by the above calculation in Tables 1 and 2.
This fact of the superiority of WhatsApp is also clearly seen in the plotting of cone
in a 2 D plane in Figure 2. Thus, the Idealness of WhatsApp is far superior to
others when the weighted averaging is implemented specially from education point
of view. But it is investigated that WhatsApp is inferior to other social networking
apps in terms of “new user connectivity” parameter as WhatsApp needs the
number of people for the connection due to which it is a bit tricky. For new
user connectivity, WhatsApp need private information of people or node in
social network. It needs the mobile number of node which is difficult to get due
to privacy of nodes in social network. So, when it comes to factors like
Connectivity between People, Safety, Ease of Usage, Transfer of Files and
Educational Purposes; WhatsApp beats over others by a significant margin. The
popularity of various social networks like WhatsApp, Facebook, LinkedIn,
Instagram, Twitter, Quora and Flickr is studied among people of different age
groups and from different professional backgrounds in our earlier work.29–31 In
12 International Journal of Electrical Engineering & Education 0(0)

Table 2. Comparison of clustering efficiency with fuzzy k-means and fuzzy k-medoids.

Social network Fuzzy k-means Fuzzy k-medoids

Facebook 0.3730533316698125 0.4360217071667474

WhatsApp 0.46408490232124006 0.6486136072295464
Instagram 0.8889470293541462 0.9729860894412539
LinkedIn 0.9002 0.99

Figure 2. Facebook plotting.

Figure 3. WhatsApp plotting.

Rani et al 13

Figure 4. Instagram plotting.

Figure 5. LinkedIn plotting.

that paper, based on data collected, it is also found that WhatsApp is the most
popular social network platform among the students because of simple, secure,
reliable messaging and calling.

Conclusion
The paper analyzed the social networks from an educational point of view through
an intelligent method that focuses on a three-dimensional geometrical model. It
has the advantage of being easy to visualize. Moreover, the results obtained are
much better than the traditional methods owing to the implementation of
14 International Journal of Electrical Engineering & Education 0(0)

Figure 6. Multiple bar graph showing a comparison of all social networks based on parameters.

evolutionary algorithms. The surveys are conducted to make sure that the com-
parison is credible and practical. This method can be further extended to a large
number of social networks and even better results can be obtained with more
parameters. It is a scalable approach and can be extended to a greater number
of social networks in the future.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication
of this article.

ORCID iD
Poonam Rani https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5866-238X

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