Paper Info
Title
The Social Bow Tie.
Abstract
Understanding strength in networks, and the factors that influence it, have received much attention in a myriad of disciplines for decades. Several models incorporating indicators of strength have been proposed and used to quantify relationships in networks, and a standard set of structural network metrics have been applied to predominantly online media sites to predict strength. Here, we introduce the concept of the social bow tie framework, a small subgraph of the network that consists of a collection of nodes and ties that surround a of interest, forming a topological structure that resembles a bow tie. We also define several intuitive and interpretable metrics that quantify properties of the bow tie. We use random forests and regression models to predict categorical and continuous measures of strength from different properties of the bow tie, including nodal attributes. We also investigate what aspects of the bow are most predictive of strength in two distinct networks: a collection of 75 rural villages in India and a nationwide call network of European mobile phone users. Our results indicate several of the bow metrics are highly predictive of strength, and we find the more the circles of two individuals overlap, the stronger their tie, consistent with previous findings. However, we also find that the more tightly-knit their non-overlapping circles, the weaker the tie. This new finding complements our current understanding of what drives the strength of ties in networks.
Year
Venue
Field
2017
arXiv: Social and Information Networks
Data mining,Social media,Tie strength,Social network,Categorical variable,Computer science,Theoretical computer science,Artificial intelligence,Bow tie,Metrics
DocType
Volume
Citations 
Journal
abs/1710.04177
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
3
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Heather Mattie100.34
Kenth Engø-Monsen2243.94
Rich Ling373.19
Jukka-pekka Onnela447536.55