Paper Info
Title
Qualities And Inequalities In Online Social Networks Through The Lens Of The Generalized Friendship Paradox
Abstract
The friendship paradox is the phenomenon that in social networks, people on average have fewer friends than their friends do. The generalized friendship paradox is an extension to attributes other than the number of friends. The friendship paradox and its generalized version have gathered recent attention due to the information they provide about network structure and local inequalities. In this paper, we propose several measures of nodal qualities which capture different aspects of their activities and influence in online social networks. Using these measures we analyse the prevalence of the generalized friendship paradox over Twitter and we report high levels of prevalence (up to over 90% of nodes). We contend that this prevalence of the friendship paradox and its generalized version arise because of the hierarchical nature of the connections in the network. This hierarchy is nested as opposed to being star-like. We conclude that these paradoxes are collective phenomena not created merely by a minority of well-connected or high-attribute nodes. Moreover, our results show that a large fraction of individuals can experience the generalized friendship paradox even in the absence of a significant correlation between degrees and attributes.
Year
DOI
Venue
2016
10.1371/journal.pone.0143633
PLOS ONE
Field
DocType
Volume
Social psychology,Social network,Social media,Sociology,Inequality,Through-the-lens metering,Phenomenon,Friendship paradox,Hierarchy,Network structure
Journal
11
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
2
1932-6203
1
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.39
13
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Naghmeh Momeni143.87
Michael G. Rabbat250.84