BL-MNE: Emerging Heterogeneous Social Network Embedding through Broad Learning with Aligned Autoencoder

Network embedding aims at projecting the network data into a low-dimensional feature space, where the nodes are represented as a unique feature vector and network structure can be effectively preserved. In recent years, more and more online application service sites can be represented as massive and complex networks, which are extremely challenging for traditional machine learning algorithms to deal with. Effective embedding of the complex network data into low-dimension feature representation can both save data storage space and enable traditional machine learning algorithms applicable to handle the network data. Network embedding performance will degrade greatly if the networks are of a sparse structure, like the emerging networks with few connections. In this paper, we propose to learn the embedding representation for a target emerging network based on the broad learning setting, where the emerging network is aligned with other external mature networks at the same time. To solve the problem, a new embedding framework, namely "Deep alIgned autoencoder based eMbEdding" (DIME), is introduced in this paper. DIME handles the diverse link and attribute in a unified analytic based on broad learning, and introduces the multiple aligned attributed heterogeneous social network concept to model the network structure. A set of meta paths are introduced in the paper, which define various kinds of connections among users via the heterogeneous link and attribute information. The closeness among users in the networks are defined as the meta proximity scores, which will be fed into DIME to learn the embedding vectors of users in the emerging network. Extensive experiments have been done on real-world aligned social networks, which have demonstrated the effectiveness of DIME in learning the emerging network embedding vectors.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures, 4 tables. Full paper is accepted by ICDM 2017, In: Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining

Data-driven Computational Social Science: A Survey

Social science concerns issues on individuals, relationships, and the whole society. The complexity of research topics in social science makes it the amalgamation of multiple disciplines, such as economics, political science, and sociology, etc. For centuries, scientists have conducted many studies to understand the mechanisms of the society. However, due to the limitations of traditional research methods, there exist many critical social issues to be explored. To solve those issues, computational social science emerges due to the rapid advancements of computation technologies and the profound studies on social science. With the aids of the advanced research techniques, various kinds of data from diverse areas can be acquired nowadays, and they can help us look into social problems with a new eye. As a result, utilizing various data to reveal issues derived from computational social science area has attracted more and more attentions. In this paper, to the best of our knowledge, we present a survey on data-driven computational social science for the first time which primarily focuses on reviewing application domains involving human dynamics. The state-of-the-art research on human dynamics is reviewed from three aspects: individuals, relationships, and collectives. Specifically, the research methodologies used to address research challenges in aforementioned application domains are summarized. In addition, some important open challenges with respect to both emerging research topics and research methods are discussed.Comment: 28 pages, 8 figure

LATTE: Application Oriented Social Network Embedding

In recent years, many research works propose to embed the network structured data into a low-dimensional feature space, where each node is represented as a feature vector. However, due to the detachment of embedding process with external tasks, the learned embedding results by most existing embedding models can be ineffective for application tasks with specific objectives, e.g., community detection or information diffusion. In this paper, we propose study the application oriented heterogeneous social network embedding problem. Significantly different from the existing works, besides the network structure preservation, the problem should also incorporate the objectives of external applications in the objective function. To resolve the problem, in this paper, we propose a novel network embedding framework, namely the "appLicAtion orienTed neTwork Embedding" (Latte) model. In Latte, the heterogeneous network structure can be applied to compute the node "diffusive proximity" scores, which capture both local and global network structures. Based on these computed scores, Latte learns the network representation feature vectors by extending the autoencoder model model to the heterogeneous network scenario, which can also effectively unite the objectives of network embedding and external application tasks. Extensive experiments have been done on real-world heterogeneous social network datasets, and the experimental results have demonstrated the outstanding performance of Latte in learning the representation vectors for specific application tasks.Comment: 11 Pages, 12 Figures, 1 Tabl