Mechanism Research For Group Behavior Of Online Users

The development of internet shows two trends of network socialization and social networked, which give behaviors of online group users3characters-instantaneity and scale, complexity and unpredictability, and uncertainty. These characters make online users develop more easily on two extreme behaviors, collective intelligence (CI) and group polarization (GP). This research aims at defining these two group behaviors, and then exploring the influencing factors to the two behaviors in order to get the mechanism, which in detail is organized below.1. Definition of group behaviors of online usersThrough comparing massive related concepts, the meaning and classification of CI and GP are defined. The swarm intelligence theory, social comparison theory, Persuasive argument theory and social influence theory are then used to explain CI and GP. And the indicators and possible influencing factors of CI and GP are summarized.2. The influencing factors of CICombined with the user data from Wikipedia and aiming at the Scale characters of online users’behavior, the Multi-Agent modeling and simulation is selected to explore the influence of group size and classification of Wikipedia entries on CI. The result shows that,(1)The increase of group size will positively increase the quality of entries and thus CI appears.(2) The increase group size brings to quality of entries is mainly reflected in the increase of completeness of entries.(3) The quality of informational entries is more likely to be influenced by group size compared with that of knowledge entries.3. The influencing factors of GPThe data from B YR forum is used to explore the influence of group size, interaction strength, information ambiguity and sensitivity respectively to two kinds of GP by empirical study. The result shows that, (1)The interaction will strength bipolar polarization and weaken unipolar polarization.(2)Information ambiguity and sensitivity will strengthen unipolar polarization.(3)Group size shows no significant relationship to the formulation of GP.