Domain-aware trust network extraction for trust propagation in large-scale heterogeneous trust networks

Because users of online social networks (OSNs) may encounter others whom they have incomplete knowledge of or no previous experience with, trust propagation has become increasingly necessary in many real-world applications. However, trust propagation in extracted trust networks often fails because few studies view trust as domain-dependent. To address this gap in the research, this paper attempts to extract a domain-aware trust network to achieve more accurate trust propagation. A directed multigraph is adopted to model the multiple trust relationships among users in a heterogeneous trust network (HTN). A domain-aware trust metric is then designed to measure the degree of trust between users considering their domain-aware influential power in an OSN. A domain-aware trust network extraction approach is proposed in accordance with the trust model and domain-aware trust metric. Based on a real-world dataset, prevailing trust propagation algorithms are applied in the extracted domain-aware trust network, which validates our domain-aware trust network extraction approach. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.