Jon Kleinberg, Cornell University

"Positive and Negative Relationships in On-Line Social Networks"

Abstract:
The social networks in many on-line settings encode a mixture of positive (friendly) and negative (antagonistic) relationships, but the bulk of research on these networks to date has focused almost exclusively on the positive interpretations of the links. We discuss how 
the interplay between positive and negative relationships affects the overall functioning of on-line social networks, and we connect our analysis to theories of signed networks from social psychology.

In addition to providing a perspective for reasoning about the underlying networks and applications, this analysis provides one of the first large-scale evaluations of these theories using on-line datasets. We find that classical theories capture certain of the underlying effects, but that they are also at odds with some of the fundamental phenomena we observe--particularly related to the evolving, directed nature of the networks.

Speaker Bio:
Jon Kleinberg is on the faculty of the Computer Science Department at Cornell University, where he holds the position of Tisch University Professor.

His research focuses on issues at the interface of networks and information, with an emphasis on the social and information networks that underpin the Web and other on-line media.

He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and serves on the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Advisory Committee of the National Science Foundation, and the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) of the National Research Council.

He is the recipient of MacArthur, Packard, and Sloan Foundation Fellowships, as well as the Nevanlinna Prize, Katayanagi Prize, ACM-Infosys Foundation Award, and National Academy of Sciences Award for Initiatives in Research.

*** The Web Science Lecture Series is supported by Yahoo! ***