Tracking significant topics of discourse in forums

摘要

Users in public forums often mention certain topics in the course of their discussions. Member's comments in messages to other members are analyzed to obtain terms that co-occur with topics. Frequencies of co-occurrence of a term with topics are normalized based on frequency of the term in a random sample of message. The terms are ranked by their normalized frequency of co-occurrence with a topic in messages. The top terms are selected based on their rank. Analysis of demographic information associated with members that mentioned top terms associated with a topic is displayed in graphical format that highlights the relationship between the age, gender, and usage of the top terms over time. The demographic information presented includes average age of members that mentioned a top term or their gender information within a selected time interval.

主权项

1. A computer implemented method comprising:
storing, by a social networking system, member profiles of a plurality of users, each member profile storing one or more demographic attributes for a user, wherein the social networking system allows users to communicate with other users via messages; receiving a plurality of messages sent by users of the social networking system; for each message in the plurality of messages, storing information associating the message with a member profile of a user that sent the message; collecting a plurality of terms occurring in the plurality of messages, each of the plurality of terms co-occurring with a topic; selecting a demographic attribute stored in the member profiles of the plurality of users of the social networking system; determining a plurality of ranges of values of the demographic attribute; identifying a range in the plurality of ranges as a minority group if the number of users in the plurality of users having the demographic attribute within the range is below a threshold value; for each term, in the plurality of terms:
determining a normalized frequency of the term as a ratio of a frequency of co-occurrence of the term with the topic to a frequency of occurrence of the term in a random sample of messages; anddetermining a weighted aggregate value of the demographic attribute of users that used the term in at least a message, the weighted aggregate value weighing users of the minority group higher than users of one or more other ranges; and configuring for presentation, a graphical display showing one or more terms, the presentation of each of the one or more terms based on the weighted aggregate value of the demographic attribute for the term and the normalized frequency of the term.