Attributed Signed Network Embedding

Abstract

The major task of network embedding is to learn low-dimensional vector representations of social-network nodes. It facilitates many analytical tasks such as link prediction and node clustering and thus has attracted increasing attention. The majority of existing embedding algorithms are designed for unsigned social networks. However, many social media networks have both positive and negative links, for which unsigned algorithms have little utility. Recent findings in signed network analysis suggest that negative links have distinct properties and added value over positive links. This brings about both challenges and opportunities for signed network embedding. In addition, user attributes, which encode properties and interests of users, provide complementary information to network structures and have the potential to improve signed network embedding. Therefore, in this paper, we study the novel problem of signed social network embedding with attributes. We propose a novel framework SNEA, which exploits the network structure and user attributes simultaneously for network representation learning. Experimental results on link prediction and node clustering with real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of SNEA.