Grouping is a key issue in social communities on account of effective organisational schemes that allow members to benefit from collaboration and social interactions.
For example, Facebook reached 2.4 billion active users in 2019, and in the past five years, over a billion groups have formed on the platform. In each group, individuals must believe the group will provide them with some value, whether in the form of entertainment or information.
The group, in turn, must determine the value each individual brings to the group, as well as how important that value is in accepting members. In general, positive interactions between members improve the group's social capital or its effectiveness, as confirmed by researchers in the first research study. The impact increases with the level of the group member's relationship and their cohesion with the team.
The researchers also examined data on interactions from 34,541 individuals on two Italian social networks - EPINIONS and CIAO.
EPINIONS and CIAO users were given the task of assigning ratings to specific posts and could also further expand their own network of trust by adding other users whose reviews they thought were valuable.
In forming their conclusions, the researchers analysed a total of three classes of users, from the most valuable to the least valuable members of the group. They found that when one user has limited or insufficient interactions with another user, they turn to their network of friends for references and credibility. The principle is thus similar to functioning in a real community in the physical world.
The researchers implemented this strategy into a ready-made algorithm to form groups in virtual communities based on a weighted voting mechanism, whereby each vote was represented by a value of trust gained through an appropriate combination of reliability and reputation.
This strategy, when applied to social network data, has significantly improved the overall value of group credibility. Researchers are now studying trust metrics in more complex group configurations.
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