4,636 research outputs found
Benchmarking Measures of Network Influence
Identifying key agents for the transmission of diseases (ideas, technology,
etc.) across social networks has predominantly relied on measures of centrality
on a static base network or a temporally flattened graph of agent interactions.
Various measures have been proposed as the best trackers of influence, such as
degree centrality, betweenness, and -shell, depending on the structure of
the connectivity. We consider SIR and SIS propagation dynamics on a
temporally-extruded network of observed interactions and measure the
conditional marginal spread as the change in the magnitude of the infection
given the removal of each agent at each time: its temporal knockout (TKO)
score. We argue that the exhaustive approach of the TKO score makes it an
effective benchmark measure for evaluating the accuracy of other, often more
practical, measures of influence. We find that none of the common network
measures applied to the induced flat graphs are accurate predictors of network
propagation influence on the systems studied; however, temporal networks and
the TKO measure provide the requisite targets for the hunt for effective
predictive measures
Structure of Heterogeneous Networks
Heterogeneous networks play a key role in the evolution of communities and
the decisions individuals make. These networks link different types of
entities, for example, people and the events they attend. Network analysis
algorithms usually project such networks unto simple graphs composed of
entities of a single type. In the process, they conflate relations between
entities of different types and loose important structural information. We
develop a mathematical framework that can be used to compactly represent and
analyze heterogeneous networks that combine multiple entity and link types. We
generalize Bonacich centrality, which measures connectivity between nodes by
the number of paths between them, to heterogeneous networks and use this
measure to study network structure. Specifically, we extend the popular
modularity-maximization method for community detection to use this centrality
metric. We also rank nodes based on their connectivity to other nodes. One
advantage of this centrality metric is that it has a tunable parameter we can
use to set the length scale of interactions. By studying how rankings change
with this parameter allows us to identify important nodes in the network. We
apply the proposed method to analyze the structure of several heterogeneous
networks. We show that exploiting additional sources of evidence corresponding
to links between, as well as among, different entity types yields new insights
into network structure
On the limiting behavior of parameter-dependent network centrality measures
We consider a broad class of walk-based, parameterized node centrality
measures for network analysis. These measures are expressed in terms of
functions of the adjacency matrix and generalize various well-known centrality
indices, including Katz and subgraph centrality. We show that the parameter can
be "tuned" to interpolate between degree and eigenvector centrality, which
appear as limiting cases. Our analysis helps explain certain correlations often
observed between the rankings obtained using different centrality measures, and
provides some guidance for the tuning of parameters. We also highlight the
roles played by the spectral gap of the adjacency matrix and by the number of
triangles in the network. Our analysis covers both undirected and directed
networks, including weighted ones. A brief discussion of PageRank is also
given.Comment: First 22 pages are the paper, pages 22-38 are the supplementary
material
Theories for influencer identification in complex networks
In social and biological systems, the structural heterogeneity of interaction
networks gives rise to the emergence of a small set of influential nodes, or
influencers, in a series of dynamical processes. Although much smaller than the
entire network, these influencers were observed to be able to shape the
collective dynamics of large populations in different contexts. As such, the
successful identification of influencers should have profound implications in
various real-world spreading dynamics such as viral marketing, epidemic
outbreaks and cascading failure. In this chapter, we first summarize the
centrality-based approach in finding single influencers in complex networks,
and then discuss the more complicated problem of locating multiple influencers
from a collective point of view. Progress rooted in collective influence
theory, belief-propagation and computer science will be presented. Finally, we
present some applications of influencer identification in diverse real-world
systems, including online social platforms, scientific publication, brain
networks and socioeconomic systems.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figure
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