Finding Trendsetters in Online Forums

Observing the movie of the social network in the third month and filtering for the actors with highest betweenness identifies Nuck as the most central and influential person, and Jan Vigne as an important contributor (Figure 17).

Figure 17. Social network of actors, filtered by betweenness, and contribution index, to identify most influential actors

Once the most influential actors have been identified there influence can by traced over time by looking at how their betweenness changes over time. Figure 18 illustrates when in time community leader Nuck and influencer Jan Vigne are most central.

Figure 18. Evolution of betweeness over time for influentials Nuck and Jan Vigne