IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/phsmap/v450y2016icp193-204.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Discriminating bot accounts based solely on temporal features of microblog behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Pan, Junshan
  • Liu, Ying
  • Liu, Xiang
  • Hu, Hanping

Abstract

As the largest microblog service in China, Sina Weibo has attracted numerous automated applications (known as bots) due to its popularity and open architecture. We classify the active users from Sina Weibo into human, bot-based and hybrid groups based solely on the study of temporal features of their posting behavior. The anomalous burstiness parameter and time-interval entropy value are exploited to characterize automation. We also reveal different behavior patterns among the three types of users regarding their reposting ratio, daily rhythm and active days. Our findings may help Sina Weibo manage a better community and should be considered for dynamic models of microblog behaviors.

Suggested Citation

  • Pan, Junshan & Liu, Ying & Liu, Xiang & Hu, Hanping, 2016. "Discriminating bot accounts based solely on temporal features of microblog behavior," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 450(C), pages 193-204.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:450:y:2016:i:c:p:193-204
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2015.12.148
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437116000388
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.physa.2015.12.148?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pan, Junshan & Hu, Hanping & Liu, Ying, 2014. "Human behavior during Flash Crowd in web surfing," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 413(C), pages 212-219.
    2. Christian Doerr & Norbert Blenn & Piet Van Mieghem, 2013. "Lognormal Infection Times of Online Information Spread," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(5), pages 1-6, May.
    3. Harder, Uli & Paczuski, Maya, 2006. "Correlated dynamics in human printing behavior," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 361(1), pages 329-336.
    4. Gabriela Tavares & Aldo Faisal, 2013. "Scaling-Laws of Human Broadcast Communication Enable Distinction between Human, Corporate and Robot Twitter Users," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(7), pages 1-11, July.
    5. J. Guo & C. Fan & Z. Guo, 2011. "Weblog patterns and human dynamics with decreasing interest," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 81(3), pages 341-344, June.
    6. Albert-László Barabási, 2005. "The origin of bursts and heavy tails in human dynamics," Nature, Nature, vol. 435(7039), pages 207-211, May.
    7. Yu, Jiefei & Hu, Yanqing & Yu, Min & Di, Zengru, 2010. "Analyzing netizens’ view and reply behaviors on the forum," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(16), pages 3267-3273.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Qi Li & Cong Wei & Jianning Dang & Lei Cao & Li Liu, 2020. "Tracking and Analyzing Public Emotion Evolutions During COVID-19: A Case Study from the Event-Driven Perspective on Microblogs," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(18), pages 1-24, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pan, Junshan & Hu, Hanping & Liu, Ying, 2014. "Human behavior during Flash Crowd in web surfing," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 413(C), pages 212-219.
    2. Sun, Zhi & Peng, Qinke & Lv, Jia & Zhong, Tao, 2017. "Analyzing the posting behaviors in news forums with incremental inter-event time," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 479(C), pages 203-212.
    3. Yong, Nuo & Ni, Shunjiang & Shen, Shifei & Ji, Xuewei, 2016. "An understanding of human dynamics in urban subway traffic from the Maximum Entropy Principle," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 456(C), pages 222-227.
    4. Wang, Yanjun & Zhang, Qiqian & Zhu, Chenping & Hu, Minghua & Duong, Vu, 2016. "Human activity under high pressure: A case study on fluctuation scaling of air traffic controller’s communication behaviors," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 441(C), pages 151-157.
    5. Pan, Jun-Shan & Li, Yuan-Qi & Hu, Han-Ping & Hu, Yong, 2021. "Modeling collective behavior of posting microblogs by stochastic differential equation with jump," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 578(C).
    6. Li, Zhenpeng & Tang, Xijin & Zhou, Haijun & Yan, Donghui, 2018. "An empirical investigation and theoretic modeling for the collective online visiting behaviors," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 503(C), pages 969-980.
    7. Anzhi Sheng & Qi Su & Aming Li & Long Wang & Joshua B. Plotkin, 2023. "Constructing temporal networks with bursty activity patterns," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-10, December.
    8. He, Yifan & Zhao, Chen & Zeng, An, 2022. "Ranking locations in a city via the collective home-work relations in human mobility data," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 608(P1).
    9. Lu, Xi & Mo, Hongming & Deng, Yong, 2015. "An evidential opinion dynamics model based on heterogeneous social influential power," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 98-107.
    10. Wang, Cheng-Jun & Wu, Lingfei, 2016. "The scaling of attention networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 448(C), pages 196-204.
    11. Simon DeDeo, 2016. "Conflict and Computation on Wikipedia: A Finite-State Machine Analysis of Editor Interactions," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 8(3), pages 1-23, July.
    12. Baek, Seung Ki & Kim, Tae Young & Kim, Beom Jun, 2008. "Testing a priority-based queue model with Linux command histories," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 387(14), pages 3660-3668.
    13. Jing Yang & Yingwu Chen, 2011. "Fast Computing Betweenness Centrality with Virtual Nodes on Large Sparse Networks," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(7), pages 1-5, July.
    14. Baltakys, Kęstutis & Kanniainen, Juho & Saramäki, Jari & Kivelä, Mikko, 2023. "Investor trade allocation patterns in stock markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 210(C), pages 191-209.
    15. Diao, Su-Meng & Liu, Yun & Zeng, Qing-An & Luo, Gui-Xun & Xiong, Fei, 2014. "A novel opinion dynamics model based on expanded observation ranges and individuals’ social influences in social networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 415(C), pages 220-228.
    16. Liu, Jian-Guo & Li, Ren-De & Guo, Qiang & Zhang, Yi-Cheng, 2018. "Collective iteration behavior for online social networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 499(C), pages 490-497.
    17. Zhou, Bin & Xie, Jia-Rong & Yan, Xiao-Yong & Wang, Nianxin & Wang, Bing-Hong, 2017. "A model of task-deletion mechanism based on the priority queueing system of Barabási," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 466(C), pages 415-421.
    18. Chen, Ning & Zhu, Xuzhen & Chen, Yanyan, 2019. "Information spreading on complex networks with general group distribution," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 523(C), pages 671-676.
    19. Zhenpeng Li & Xijin Tang & Zhenjie Hong, 2022. "Collective attention dynamic induced by novelty decay," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 95(8), pages 1-11, August.
    20. C Ben Gibson & Norbou Buchler & Blaine Hoffman & Claire-Genevieve La Fleur, 2019. "Participation shifts explain degree distributions in a human communications network," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(5), pages 1-13, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:450:y:2016:i:c:p:193-204. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/physica-a-statistical-mechpplications/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.