Signed networks in social media

Relations between users on social media sites often reflect a mixture of positive (friendly) and negative (antagonistic) interactions. In contrast to the bulk of research on social networks that has focused almost exclusively on positive interpretations of links between people, we study how the interplay between positive and negative relationships affects the structure of on-line social networks. We connect our analyses to theories of signed networks from social psychology. We find that the classical theory of structural balance tends to capture certain common patterns of interaction, but that it is also at odds with some of the fundamental phenomena we observe --- particularly related to the evolving,…