A large-scale community structure analysis in Facebook
A large-scale community structure analysis in Facebook
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DOI：
10.1140/epjds9
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发表时间：
2012-12-01
期刊：
影响因子：
3.6
通讯作者：
Ferrara, Emilio
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Ferrara, Emilio
理解支配人类现象的社会动力学，如通信和社会关系，是当前计算社会科学的一个主要问题。特别是，鉴于前所未有的成功，在线社交网络（OSN），在本文中，我们关注的是最大的OSN的用户之间发生的聚合模式和社会动态的分析：Facebook。详细地，我们讨论了这个网络的社区结构的中观特征，考虑到社区的角度，这还没有在这样一个大规模的研究。为此，我们获取了包含数百万用户及其社会关系的网络样本;然后，我们揭示了代表用户聚集和交互的聚合单元的社区;最后，我们分析了这样一个社区网络的统计特征，发现并表征了在线社交网络中个体交互所遵循的一些特定组织模式，这是考虑到不同的抽样技术和聚类方法而出现的。这项研究提供了一些线索，个人建立在线社交网络，最终有助于建立一个良好的社会结构的社会互动的趋势，并打开了进一步的社会研究的空间。
Understanding social dynamics that govern human phenomena, such as communications and social relationships is a major problem in current computational social sciences. In particular, given the unprecedented success of online social networks (OSNs), in this paper we are concerned with the analysis of aggregation patterns and social dynamics occurring among users of the largest OSN as the date: Facebook. In detail, we discuss the mesoscopic features of the community structure of this network, considering the perspective of the communities, which has not yet been studied on such a large scale. To this purpose, we acquired a sample of this network containing millions of users and their social relationships; then, we unveiled the communities representing the aggregation units among which users gather and interact; finally, we analyzed the statistical features of such a network of communities, discovering and characterizing some specific organization patterns followed by individuals interacting in online social networks, that emerge considering different sampling techniques and clustering methodologies. This study provides some clues of the tendency of individuals to establish social interactions in online social networks that eventually contribute to building a well-connected social structure, and opens space for further social studies.