Automated social hierarchy detection through email network analysis

This paper provides a novel algorithm for automatically extracting social hierarchy data from electronic communication behavior. The algorithm is based on data mining user behaviors to automatically analyze and catalog patterns of communications between entities in a email collection to extract social standing. The advantage to such automatic methods is that they extract relevancy between hierarchy levels and are dynamic over time. We illustrate the algorithms over real world data using the Enron corporation's email archive. The results show great promise when compared to the corporations work chart and judicial proceeding analyzing the major players.