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Social ties, homophily and extraversion--introversion to generate complex networks

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Abstract

Many interconnected systems and particularly social interactions can be modeled as networks. These networks often exhibit common properties such as high clustering coefficient, low average path lengths and degree distributions following power-law. Networks having these properties are called small world-scale free networks or simply complex networks. Recent interest in complex networks has catalysed the development of algorithmic models to artificially generate these networks. Often these algorithms introduce network properties in the model regardless of their social interpretation resulting in networks which are statistically similar but structurally different from real world networks. In this paper, we focus on social networks and apply concepts of social ties, homophily and extraversion-introversion to develop a model for social networks with small world and scale free properties. We claim that the proposed model produces networks which are structurally similar to real world social networks.

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Notes

  1. NetScience Network is a co-authorship network of scientists working on network theory and experiments, as compiled by Newman in May (2006). The biggest connected component is considered for visualization here which contains 379 nodes and 914 edges.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Levich Institute and Physics Department, City College of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Faraz Zaidi

  2. Karachi Institute of Economics and Technology, Karachi, Pakistan

    Faraz Zaidi & Muhammad Qasim Pasta

  3. Usman Institute of Technology, Karachi, Pakistan

    Muhammad Qasim Pasta

  4. LIRMM, Université Paul Valéry Montpellier, Montpellier, France

    Arnaud Sallaberry

  5. CNRS UMR 5800 LaBRI, Talence, France

    Guy Melançon

  6. INRIA Bordeaux – Sud-Ouest, Talence, France

    Guy Melançon

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  1. Faraz Zaidi
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  2. Muhammad Qasim Pasta
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  3. Arnaud Sallaberry
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  4. Guy Melançon
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Correspondence to Faraz Zaidi.

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Zaidi, F., Pasta, M.Q., Sallaberry, A. et al. Social ties, homophily and extraversion--introversion to generate complex networks. Soc. Netw. Anal. Min. 5, 29 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-015-0270-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-015-0270-4

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