Identifying people who are talking about the same topic in social networks, even having a different cultural background

Social media are assumed here as a blending of technology and social interaction for the co-creation of value, as in social networks. We discuss that in such environments, it is possible to find people with common interests that potentially can promote discussions, teaching and learning from each other. However, the approaches to recommend people to interact with in the social network still do not consider the users’ cultural background. This paper describes an approach to identify people who are talking about the same topic in social networks, even having a different cultural background, in order to introduce to each other and leverage interaction to exchange experience, knowledge, etc. Some tests’ results applying the proposal are presented. The approach was adopted in three different topics of discussion and the results suggest that the generated cultural understanding improves the chances of identifying people with similar interests. 1 Federal University of São Carlos, UFSCar, Computing Department {gilberto_astolfi,vanessa_magalhaes,marcos_silva,junia}@dc.ufscar.b r Identifying people who are talking about the same topic in social networks even having a different cultural background: instruções para preparação de documentos em Word RITA • Volume 17 • Número 2 • 2010 235