Modeling community structure and topics in dynamic text networks

Abstract

The last decade has seen great progress in both dynamic network modeling and topic modeling. This paper draws upon both areas to create a Bayesian method that allows topic discovery to inform the latent network model and the network structure to facilitate topic identification. We apply this method to the 467 top political blogs of 2012. Our results find complex community structure within this set of blogs, where community membership depends strongly upon the set of topics in which the blogger is interested.