Structure and stability of online chat networks built on emotion-carrying links

High-resolution data of online chats are studied as a physical system in the laboratory in order to quantify collective behavior of users. Our analysis reveals strong regularities characteristic of natural systems with additional features. In particular, we find self-organized dynamics with long-range correlations in user actions and persistent associations among users that have the properties of a social network. Furthermore, the evolution of the graph and its architecture with specific k -core structure are shown to be related with the type and the emotion arousal of exchanged messages. Partitioning of the graph by deletion of the links which carry high arousal messages exhibits critical fluctuations at the percolation threshold.