Communication gap management for fertile community

by Naohiro Matsumura, David E. Goldberg, and Xavier Llorà (2006).

Journal of Soft Computing, Volume 11 , Issue 8, pp. 791–798, ACM press. Link to the ACM portal. Initial work also available as IlliGAL TR No 2005001.

Abstract

In the paper, we first present an approach to extract social networks from message boards on the Internet. Then we propose communication gaps based on structural features of the social networks as an indicator of understanding the state of communication. After we classify 3,000 social networks into three types of communication, i.e., interactive communication, distributed communication, and soapbox communication, we suggest communication gap management to identify the types of communication, the roles of individuals, and important ties, all of which can be used for drawing up a plan for realizing fertile community.