On Mining and Social Role Discovery in Internet Forums

Internet forums have recently become the leading form of peer communication in the Internet. An Internet forum is a Web application for publishing user-generated content under the form of a discussion. Discussions considering particular subjects are called topics or threads. Internet forums are sometimes called Web forums, discussion boards, message boards, discussion groups, or bulletin boards. The most important feature of Internet forums is their social aspect. Many forums are active for a long period of time and attract a group of dedicated users, who build a tight social community around a forum. With great abundance of forums devoted to every possible aspect of human activity, such as politics, religion, sports, technology, entertainment, economy, fashion, and many more, users are able to find a forum that perfectly suits their needs and interests. In this paper we present a data mining model for social role discovery and attribution in Internet forum data.