Camacho, DavidPanizo-Lledot, AngelBello-Orgaz, GemaGonzalez-Pardo, AntonioCambria, Erik2024-01-292024-01-292020-11The four dimensions of social network analysis: An overview of research methods, applications, and software tools. D. Camacho, A. Panizo-Lledot, G. Bello-Orgaz, A. Gonzalez-Pardo, E. Cambria. Information Fusion, Vol. 63, pp. 88-120. 2020.1566-2535https://hdl.handle.net/10115/29111Social network based applications have experienced exponential growth in recent years. One of the reasons for this rise is that this application domain offers a particularly fertile place to test and develop the most advanced computational techniques to extract valuable information from the Web. The main contribution of this work is three-fold: (1) we provide an up-to-date literature review of the state of the art on social network analysis (SNA); (2) we propose a set of new metrics based on four essential features (or dimensions) in SNA; (3) finally, we provide a quantitative analysis of a set of popular SNA tools and frameworks. We have also performed a scientometric study to detect the most active research areas and application domains in this area. This work proposes the definition of four different dimensions, namely Pattern & Knowledge discovery, Information Fusion & Integration, Scalability, and Visualization, which are used to define a set of new metrics (termed degrees ) in order to evaluate the different software tools and frameworks of SNA (a set of 20 SNA-software tools are analyzed and ranked following previous metrics). These dimensions, together with the defined degrees, allow evaluating and measure the maturity of social network technologies, looking for both a quantitative assessment of them, as to shed light to the challenges and future trends in this active area.engSocial Network AnalysisSocial media miningSocial data visualizationData ScienceBig datainfo:eu-repo/semantics/article10.1016/j.inffus.2020.05.009info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess