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Inf. Syst."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2023,4,30]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>In the social network, each user has attributes for self-description called user attributes, which are semantically hierarchical. Attribute inference has become an essential way for social platforms to realize user classifications and targeted recommendations. Most existing approaches mainly focus on the flat inference problem neglecting the semantic hierarchy of user attributes, which will cause serious inconsistency in multi-level tasks. In this article, we propose a multi-level model MLI, where information propagation part collects attribute information by mining the global graph structure, and the attribute correction part realizes the mutual correction between different levels of attributes. Further, we put forward the concept of generalized semantic tree, a way of representing the hierarchical structure of user attributes, whose nodes are allowed to have multiple parent nodes unlike the regular tree. Both regular and generalized semantic trees are commonly used in practice, and can be handled by our model. Besides, by making the inference start from sub-networks with sufficient attribute information, we design a \u201cRipple\u201d algorithm to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our model. For evaluation purposes, we conduct extensive verification experiments on DBLP datasets. The experimental results show the superior effect of MLI, compared with the state-of-the-art methods.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1145\/3545797","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,6,30]],"date-time":"2022-06-30T10:18:21Z","timestamp":1656584301000},"page":"1-30","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":6,"title":["MLI: A Multi-level Inference Mechanism for User Attributes in Social Networks"],"prefix":"10.1145","volume":"41","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7299-1208","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Hang","family":"Zhang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Communication Content Cognition, People\u2019s Daily Online, Beijing 100733, China, College of Intelligence and Computing, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0824-2931","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yajun","family":"Yang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State Key Laboratory of Communication Content Cognition, People\u2019s Daily Online, Beijing 100733, China, College of Intelligence and Computing, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9651-0651","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Xin","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Intelligence and Computing, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2000-6683","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Hong","family":"Gao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Faculty of Computing, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7765-8095","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Qinghua","family":"Hu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"College of Intelligence and Computing, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"320","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,12,21]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_3_2_2_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/ICMEW.2012.104"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_3_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1155\/2007\/64960"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_4_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/978-1-4419-8462-3_5"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_5_2","first-page":"15","volume-title":"Proceedings of the AAAI Spring Symposium on Computational Approaches to Analyzing Weblogs","author":"Burger John D.","year":"2006","unstructured":"John D. 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