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Who will lead and who will follow: Identifying Influential Users in Online Social Networks

A Critical Review and Future Research Directions

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Abstract

Along with the explosive growth of the phenomenon Online Social Networks (OSN), identifying influential users in OSN has received a great deal of attention in recent years. However, the development of practical approaches for identifying them is still in its infancy. By means of a structured literature review, the authors analyze and synthesize the publications particularly from two perspectives. From a research perspective, they find that existing approaches mostly build on users’ connectivity and activity but hardly consider further characteristics of influential users. Moreover, they outline two major research streams. It becomes apparent that most marketing-oriented articles draw on real-world data of OSN, while more technology-oriented papers rather have a theoretical approach and mostly evaluate their artifacts by means of formal proofs. The authors find that a stronger collaboration between the scientific Business and Information Systems Engineering (BISE) and Marketing communities could be mutually beneficial. With respect to a practitioner’s perspective, they compile advice on the practical application of approaches for the identification of influential users. It is hoped that the results can stimulate and guide future research.

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Notes

  1. For a critical discussion of related fundamental problems such as the access to data from OSN, privacy issues, and validity concerns see for instance Howison et al. (2011), Lazer et al. (2009) and with respect to the identification of influential users in OSN Sect. 5.

  2. If workshop or conference papers were identified that have been published also in a journal, only the journal article were considered when in essence the key findings remained the same.

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  1. FIM Research Center Finance & Information Management, University of Augsburg, Universitätsstr. 12, 86159, Augsburg, Germany

    Florian Probst,  Laura Grosswiele &  Regina Pfleger

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  1. Florian Probst
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  2. Laura Grosswiele
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Correspondence to Florian Probst.

Additional information

Accepted after three revisions by Prof. Dr. Hinz.

The phrase “Who will lead and who will follow” is adopted from Katz (1957, p. 73).

This article is also available in German in print and via http://www.wirtschaftsinformatik.de: Probst F, Grosswiele L, Pfleger R (2013) Who will lead and who will follow: Identifikation einflussreicher Nutzer in Online Social Networks. Eine kritische Literaturanalyse und zukünftige Forschungsfelder. WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK. doi: 10.1007/s11576-013-0362-6.

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Probst, F., Grosswiele, L. & Pfleger, R. Who will lead and who will follow: Identifying Influential Users in Online Social Networks. Bus Inf Syst Eng 5, 179–193 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-013-0263-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-013-0263-7

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