A Machine Learning Approach towards Detecting Extreme Adopters in Digital Communities

Abstract

In this study we try to identify extreme adopters on a discussion forum using machine learning. An extreme adopter is a user that has adopted a high level of a community-specific jargon and therefore can be seen as a user that has a high degree of identification with the community. The dataset that we consider consists of a Swedish xenophobic discussion forum where we use a machine learning approach to identify extreme adopters using a number of linguistic features that are independent on the dataset and the community. The results indicates that it is possible to separate these extreme adopters from the rest of the discussants on the discussion forum with more than 80% accuracy. Since the linguistic features that we use are highly domain independent, the results indicates that there is a possibility to use this kind of techniques to identify extreme adopters within other communities as well.