A Study on the Characteristics of the Long-Term Web Forum Users Using Social Network Analysis

摘要

A web forum is an online place where people who are interested in a specific topic talk with each other. A medical web forum has been used to obtain the health and wellbeing information to prepare for an aging society. This paper proposes the methodology using sentiment analysis and social network analysis to identify the factors which turn newbies into long-term users in the medical web forum. In particular, this study analyzes the influences of the social network of the Alzheimer's Disease & Dementia (AD) medical web forum and suggests strategies to help patients, their family and medical officials suffering from Alzheimer.