Node Classification in Social Networks

When dealing with large graphs, such as those that arise in the context of online social networks, a subset of nodes may be labeled. These labels can indicate demographic values, interest, beliefs or other characteristics of the nodes (users). A core problem is to use this information to extend the labeling so that all nodes are assigned a label (or labels). In this chapter, we survey classification techniques that have been proposed for this problem. We consider two broad categories: methods based on iterative application of traditional classifiers using graph information as features, and methods which propagate the existing labels via random walks. We adopt a common perspective on these methods to highlight the similarities between different approaches within and across the two categories. We also describe some extensions and related directions to the central problem of node classification.
Comment: To appear in Social Network Data Analytics (Springer) Ed. Charu Aggarwal, March 2011