Recognition of Online Opinion Leaders Based on Social Network Analysis

Opinion leaders on the internet play an important role in promoting the formation of online public opinion, which can influence the direction of public opinion. In this paper, we use social network analysis and content analysis to recognize the opinion leaders of online communities. First of all, we propose “Eight Degree” attribute indexes based on the characteristics of opinion leaders. Then, we construct an attribute matrix of the topic participants, and use the comprehensive evaluation to recognize opinion leaders. Finally, we divide the opinion leaders into the crucial active figure and the important position figure; we can also explore the potential opinion leader deeply by deleting the opinion leaders. The theoretical significance and practical value of this method have been demonstrated by a case study.