Received 28 September 2023, accepted 23 October 2023, date of publication 1 November 2023, date of current version 8 November 2023. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3329049 Recognition of Opinion Leaders in Social Networks Using Text Posts’ Trajectory Scoring and Users’ Comments Sentiment Analysis WIDED OUESLATI 1 , SIWAR MEJRI 1 , SHAHA AL-OTAIBI 2 , (Member, IEEE), AND SARRA AYOUNI 2 1 Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Tunis, BESTMOD Laboratory, Université de la Manouba, Manouba 2010, Tunisia 2 Department of Information Systems, College of Computer and Information Sciences, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh 11671, Saudi Arabia Corresponding author: Shaha Al-Otaibi (stalotaibi@pnu.edu.sa) This work was supported by Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, through the Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University Researchers Supporting Project under Grant PNURSP2023R136. ABSTRACT Identifying opinion leaders in social networks, particularly in social media, is a crucial marketing strategy. These individuals have a considerable influence on the purchasing decisions of their communities. Companies can benefit from collaborating with relevant opinion leaders in their market as this can increase their visibility, establish their credibility, and gain consumer trust, leading to increased sales, improved brand perception, and an expanded market share. Additionally, by gaining a comprehensive understanding of opinion leaders, companies can better comprehend the trends and preferences of their target audience. This allows them to tailor their marketing and product strategies more effectively. Identifying suitable influencers to endorse their products or services is a significant challenge for companies. The identification of opinion leaders is complicated by their informal and unstructured nature, as well as the varying selection criteria depending on the marketing campaign’s goals. While numerous research studies have focused on detecting opinion leaders in social networks based on content, interactions, or a combination of both, few have explored sentiment analysis of post content, received interactions, and user comments in relation to published posts. The purpose of this paper is to present an hybrid approach to detect opinion leaders in Facebook. This approach involves analyzing the trajectory of post content by examining interactions on the post, as well as mining the text content of the post itself and analyzing the users’comments sentiments. INDEX TERMS Opinion leader, post trajectory, social signals score, sentiment analysis, comments polarity. I. INTRODUCTION Detecting opinion leaders within social networks represents a recent and pressing area of research, given the significant impact of these leaders on shaping public opinion. Social networks have become an integral component of daily life, and are now crucial in a range of fields and industries. With over 2.7 billion users accessing social networks worldwide, companies have committed considerable resources and investments towards leveraging these platforms to increase their revenue and enhance their brand reputation. In addition, social networks have surpassed the influence of traditional media outlets such as television, radio, and magazines, The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Barbara Guidi . particularly among younger consumers, thus demonstrating their unparalleled reach in disseminating information and promoting products. As mentioned above, The emergence of social networks especially social media [1] such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube as primary channels for disseminating information has spurred the creation of novel marketing strategies such as viral or digital marketing. As a result, social networks have become more influen- tial than traditional communication tools, leading to their widespread utilization across diverse fields including politics and healthcare. For instance, political candidates have taken advantage of social networks during presidential campaigns as a means of establishing closer connections with potential voters. The surge in social network usage has given rise to a new phenomenon known as the ‘‘Influencer’’ or ‘‘Opinion VOLUME 11, 2023  2023 The Authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 123589