Providing a Link Prediction Model based on Structural and Homophily Similarity in Social Networks

In recent years, with the growing number of online social networks, these networks have become one of the best markets for advertising and commerce, so studying these networks is very important. Forecasting new edges in online social networks can give us a better understanding of the growth of these networks. There have been many studies of link prediction in the field of engineering and humanities. Scientists attribute the existence of a new relationship between two individuals for two reasons: 1) Proximity to the graph (structure) 2) Similar properties of the two individuals (Homophile law). However, studying the impact of the two approaches working together to create new edges remains an open problem. Similarity metrics can also be divided into two categories; Neighborhood-based and path-based. So far, the above two theoretical approaches (proximity and homophile) have not been found together in the neighborhood-based metrics. In this paper, we first attempt to provide a solution to determine importance of the proximity to the graph and similar features in the connectivity of the graphs. Then obtained weights are assigned to both proximity and homophile. Then the best similarity metric in each approach are obtained. Finally, the selected metric of homophily similarity and structural similarity are combined with the obtained weights. The results of this study were evaluated on two datasets; Zanjan University Graduate School of Social Sciences and Pokec online Social Network. The first data set was collected for this study and then the questionnaires and data collection methods were filled out. Since this dataset is one of the few Iranian datasets that has been compiled with its users' specifications, it can be of great value. In this paper, we have been able to increase the accuracy of Neighborhood-based similarity metric by using two proximity in graph and homophily approaches.