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Focal Structures Behavior in Dynamic Social Networks

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Complex Networks & Their Applications XII (COMPLEX NETWORKS 2023)

Part of the book series: Studies in Computational Intelligence ((SCI,volume 1143))

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Abstract

The expansion of coordinating communities via focal information spreaders on online social networks has attained much-needed attention over the past few years. Several methods have been applied to investigate the influential communities of information spreaders in static social networks. However, investigating static social networks does not entirely reflect the activities and the dynamics of evolving communities over time. Researchers have applied advanced operational methods such as game theory and evolving complex graphs to describe the change in the regular communities in dynamic social networks. Yet, these methods need the ability to describe the focal information spreaders in dynamic social networks. For this purpose, in this research, we propose a systematic approach to measure the influence of focal information spreaders and track their evolution in social networks over time. This novel approach combines the focal structure analysis model and the adaptation algorithm to identify the coordinating communities of information spreaders in social networks and illustrate their development in the network over time, respectively. We evaluate our findings using a real-world dynamic Twitter network collected from the Saudi Arabian women’s Right to Drive campaign coordination in 2013. The outcomes of this approach allow observing, predicting, tracking, and measuring the coordination among the focal information spreaders over time. Correspondingly, this approach investigates and illustrates when the information spreaders will escalate their activities, where they concentrate their influence in the network, and what coordinating communities of spreaders are more tactical than others in the network.

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Acknowledgment

This research is funded in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation (OIA-1946391, OIA-1920920, IIS-1636933, ACI-1429160, and IIS-1110868), U.S. Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (FA9550-22-1-0332), U.S. Office of Naval Research (N00014-10-1-0091, N00014-14-1-0489, N00014-15-P-1187, N00014-16-1-2016, N00014-16-1-2412, N00014-17-1-2675, N00014-17-1-2605, N68335-19-C-0359, N00014-19-1-2336, N68335-20-C-0540, N00014-21-1-2121, N00014-21-1-2765, N00014-22-1-2318), U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, U.S. Army Research Office (W911NF-20-1-0262, W911NF-16-1-0189, W911NF-23-1-0011), U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (W31P4Q-17-C-0059), Arkansas Research Alliance, the Jerry L. Maulden/Entergy Endowment at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and the Australian Department of Defense Strategic Policy Grants Program (SPGP) (award number: 2020-106-094). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding organizations. The researchers gratefully acknowledge the support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. COSMOS Research Center, UA-Little Rock, Little Rock, AR, USA

    Mustafa Alassad & Nitin Agarwal

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  1. Mustafa Alassad
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  2. Nitin Agarwal
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Correspondence to Mustafa Alassad .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Burgundy, Dijon Cedex, France

    Hocine Cherifi

  2. Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, USA

    Luis M. Rocha

  3. IUT Lumière - Université Lyon 2, University of Lyon, Bron, France

    Chantal Cherifi

  4. Department of Economics, Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, TĂĽrkiye

    Murat Donduran

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Alassad, M., Agarwal, N. (2024). Focal Structures Behavior in Dynamic Social Networks. In: Cherifi, H., Rocha, L.M., Cherifi, C., Donduran, M. (eds) Complex Networks & Their Applications XII. COMPLEX NETWORKS 2023. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 1143. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53472-0_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53472-0_18

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-53471-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-53472-0

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