Social community question answering (SCQA) sites not only provide regular question answering (QA) service but also form a social network where users can follow each other. Identifying topical opinion leaders who are both expert and influential in SCQA becomes a hot research topic. However, existing works focus on either using knowledge expertise to find experts for improving the quality of answ...

heory on the diffusion of innovations has been used to study the spread of new ideas and practices for over 50 years in a wide variety of settings. Most studies have been retrospective, and most have neglected to collect information on interpersonal communication networks. In addition, few have attempted to use the lessons from diffusion research to accelerate the diffusion of innovations. This...

BACKGROUND Twenty years after acknowledging the importance of joint responsibilities and male participation in maternal health programs, most health care systems in low income countries continue to face challenges in involving men. We explored the reasons for men's resistance to the adoption of a more proactive role in pregnancy care and their enduring influence in the decision making process d...

BACKGROUND Opinion leaders have been shown to have significant influence on the practice of health professionals and patient outcomes. METHODS Using focus groups, key informants, and sampling to redundancy techniques, we developed a questionnaire of surgeons' preferences in the treatment of tibial shaft fractures. Twenty-two well-respected and widely known orthopaedic traumatologists endorsed...

The growth of social networking has gained much interest from the research community in recent years. Social networking technology as an e-learning tool seems promising for education instructors to combine distance education. Several analysis researches of social media were conducted for detection opinion leaders. While most of the existing algorithms proposed for communities determination are ...

A popular perception holds that physicians prescribe requested drugs to patients influenced by mass mediated direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising. The phenomenon poses a serious challenge to the two-step flow model, which emphasizes the influence of opinion leaders on their followers and their legitimating power over the informing power of the mass media. This study investigates a 2...

This article studies how public opinion is associated with the introduction of renewable energy policies in Europe. While research increasingly seeks to model the link between public opinion and environmental policies, the empirical evidence is largely based on a single case: the US. This limits the generalizability of findings and we argue accordingly for a systematic, quantitative study of ho...

BACKGROUND The use of opinion leaders is a strategy used to speed the process of translating research into practice. Much is still unknown about opinion leader attributes and activities and the context in which they are most effective. Agent-based modeling is a methodological tool that enables demonstration of the interactive and dynamic effects of individuals and their behaviors on other indiv...