An Extensible Open-Source Framework for Social Network Analysis

Abstract

Online communities that form social networks became extremely important in many tasks related with information processing, presentation, navigation, especially in context of web-based information systems. Web-based information systems employing communities could benefit from the classical studies of human social interactions -social network analysis. In this paper, we present an extensible open-source JAVA-based framework for social network analysis which can be used either a a stand-alone application with its own GUI as well as a library within third-party software projects developed in JAVA. We provide not only a standalone desktop application, but the whole framework, which allows anyone to incorporate results of social networks analysis into their own project, which would possibly boost up its functionality, enhance the results etc.