Hashtags Influence Maximization: Choosing the most Influential Hashtags on Instagram

Abstract

This study aims to find influential hashtags using Influence Maximization (IM). The IM approach was implemented using hashtags network collected from Instagram. This study can help business or ordinary users to choose the most engaging hashtags for posting, as opposed to selecting influencers, which was widely studied using the IM approach. The network was build based on the hashtags co-appearance frequency. Three IM algorithms, i.e. SSA, DSSA, and IMM, were simulated under the IC and LT models. The algorithms were compared against TopUsage, which is the top hashtags based on the usage count. The IM algorithms have a similar performance with TopUsage in influence spread, which shows that IM can adapt to the hashtags network. However, the IM algorithms produced better hashtags based on the UER (unique engagement rate) metric. The best UER performance was shown by DSSA under the LT model, where it outperformed TopUsage by 17.23%. In the hashtags categorization scenario, DSSA-LT outperformed the UER of TopUsage by up to 6.87%. This categorization is more useful in a practical scenario, to find only relevant hashtags for posting. The hashtags generated by DSSA-LT are about 30-35% different from TopUsage.

Getting Better? Hegemonic, Negotiated and Oppositional Uses of Instagram for Mental Health Support

“…It may take repeated reporting (Olszanowski, 2014, p. 88), and there are instances where the platform’s moderation practices have not only proven ineffective and non-transparent (Feuston & Piper, 2019, p. 9), but also to contribute to hurting already vulnerable communities (Chancellor et al., 2016, p. 1202). Instagram’s censoring also applies—sometimes temporarily—to selected hashtags, meaning that they return no results in searches although they can still be used to tag images (Moreno et al., 2016; Suzor, 2016). Other hashtags are apparently less controversial, as search results are displayed with a click-through public service announcement and optional mental health guidance framed by the question “Can we help?”.…”