Analysis of the characteristics and evolution of knowledge label networks in the Q&A community: taking the Zhihu platform as an example

Abstract

Purpose

In the era of mobile internet, the social Q&A community has built a large-scale and complex knowledge label network through its internal knowledge units, and the scale and structure of the network have changed over time. By analysing the structural characteristics and evolution rules of knowledge label networks, the main purpose of this study is to understand the internal mechanisms of the replacement of old and new knowledge and the expansion of knowledge element boundaries, so as to explore the realization path of knowledge management in the new era from the perspective of complex networks.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper uses distributed crawlers to capture 419,349 samples from the Zhihu platform. Each sample contains 33 characteristic dimensions, and the natural year is used as the sliding window to divide the whole. In this study, the global knowledge label network and 11 local knowledge label networks are first constructed. Then, the degree distribution analysis and central node exploration of the knowledge label network are carried out using the complex network method. Finally, the average shortest path and average clustering coefficient of the network are analysed by the time series method, and the ARIMA model is used to predict the evolution of the correlation coefficient.

Findings

The research results show that the dissimilation degree of the degree distribution of the knowledge label network has gradually decreased from 2011 to 2021, and the attention of users in the knowledge community has shown a trend of distraction and diversification over time. With the expansion of the scale of the knowledge label network and the transformation to an information network, the network sparsity is becoming more and more obvious, and the knowledge granularity of the Q&A community is being refined and diversified. The prediction of the correlation coefficient of the knowledge label network by the ARIMA model shows that the connection between the labels is lacking diversity and the opinion strengthening phenomenon tends to strengthen, which is more likely to form the “echo chamber effect”, resulting in mutual isolation and even opposition between different circles. The Q&A community is about to enter a mature stage, and the corresponding status of each label has been finalized. The future development trend of label networks will be reflected in the substitution between labels, and the specific structure will not change significantly.

Originality/value

The Q&A community model is the trend in Web 2.0 community development. This study proves the effectiveness of complex networks and time series prediction methods in knowledge label network mining in the Q&A community.

Citation

Feng, X., Wang, X., Xue, Y. and Yu, H. (2023), "Analysis of the characteristics and evolution of knowledge label networks in the Q&A community: taking the Zhihu platform as an example", The Electronic Library, Vol. 41 No. 2/3, pp. 242-263. https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-10-2022-0241