Epidemic modeling of sentiment diffusion on web forums

Abstract

Due to easy accessibility and anonymousness of the Web 2.0 channels, users easily accept information and express their opinion without much restriction. Opinions are accepted and transmitted to others rapidly through social media, so opinion epidemic emerges. Opinions derived from Web can be quantified through topics, message volume of topics, and sentiment. Understanding the mechanisms and properties of opinion epidemics is important for political and marketing purposes. Epidemic models have been used in disease and are suitable to explain the opinion epidemic in Web 2.0 environment. In this research, we identify the underlying mechanism of sentiment diffusion in web forums where people with common interests express and discuss their opinions and affect each other. For that, we examine the possibility of applying epidemic model to sentiment diffusion. Specifically, we use the competency model that has two compartments to express positive sentiment and negative sentiment. Further, we modify the competency model to being fitted to opinion diffusion in the web forum. © 2017 American Scientific Publishers All rights reserved.