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Second-Order Assortative Mixing in Social Networks

Zhou, S; Cox, I; Hansen, L; (2017) Second-Order Assortative Mixing in Social Networks. In: Gonçalves, Bruno and Menezes, Ronaldo and Sinatra, Roberta and Zlatic, Vinko, (eds.) Second-Order Assortative Mixing in Social Networks: Complex Networks VIII. (pp. pp. 3-15). Springer, Cham: Cham, Switzerland. Green open access

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Abstract

In a social network, the number of links of a node, or node degree, is often assumed as a proxy for the node’s importance or prominence within the network. It is known that social networks exhibit the (first-order) assortative mixing, i.e. if two nodes are connected, they tend to have similar node degrees, suggesting that people tend to mix with those of comparable prominence. In this paper, we report the second-order assortative mixing in social networks. If two nodes are connected, we measure the degree correlation between their most prominent neighbours, rather than between the two nodes themselves. We observe very strong second-order assortative mixing in social networks, often significantly stronger than the first-order assortative mixing. This suggests that if two people interact in a social network, then the importance of the most prominent person each knows is very likely to be the same. This is also true if we measure the average prominence of neighbours of the two people. This property is weaker or negative in non-social networks. We investigate a number of possible explanations for this property. However, none of them was found to provide an adequate explanation. We therefore conclude that second-order assortative mixing is a new property of social networks.

Type: Proceedings paper
Title: Second-Order Assortative Mixing in Social Networks
Event: CompleNet 2017
ISBN-13: 978-3-319-54240-9
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-54241-6_1
Publisher version: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-31...
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author-accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: Social networks, Complex networks, Assortative mixing, Assortative coefficient, Network models, Second order, Network structure, Network topology, Network mixing pattern
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1561303
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