A procedure for constructing social network using Web search engines: the case for Japanese automotive industry

  • Authors:

  • Yuichi Kubota;Reiji Suzuki;Takaya Arita

  • Affiliations:

  • Graduate School of Information Science, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan 464-8601;Graduate School of Information Science, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan 464-8601;Graduate School of Information Science, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan 464-8601

  • Venue:
  • Artificial Life and Robotics
  • Year:
  • 2014

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Abstract

Recently, search engines have enabled us to access immense quantities of useful information in an instant. In this paper, we propose a procedure for analyzing the social relationship and structure using Web search engines, which includes novel ways to create a search query and to use the number of hits. This allows us to construct various networks that reflect directed and undirected relationships among actors under arbitrary contexts. As a case study for evaluations of the proposed procedure, we focus on 50 companies belonging to the automotive industry in Japan. We constructed several directed and undirected networks under different temporal and geographical contexts. It is shown that we can acquire a general understanding of the industrial community through the analyses of these created networks and their centrality measures.