Hierarchical partitions of social networks between rivaling leaders

PLoS One. 2018 Mar 22;13(3):e0193715. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0193715. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

A model algorithm is proposed to imitate a series of of consecutive conflicts between leaders in social groups. The leaders are represented by local hubs, i.e., nodes with highest node degrees. We simulate subsequent hierarchical partitions of a complex connected network which represents a social structure. The partitions are supposed to appear as actions of members of two conflicted groups surrounding two strongest leaders. According to the model, links at the shortest path between the rival leaders are successively removed. When the group is split into two disjoint parts then each part is further divided as the initial network. The algorithm is stopped, if in all parts a distance from a local leader to any node in his group is shorter than three links. The numerically calculated size distribution of resulting fragments of scale-free Barabási-Albert networks reveals one largest fragment which contains the original leader (hub of the network) and a number of small fragments with opponents that are described by two Weibull distributions. A mean field calculation of the size of the largest fragment is in a good agreement with numerical results. The model assumptions are validated by an application of the algorithm to the data on political blogs in U.S. (L. Adamic and N. Glance, Proc. WWW-2005). The obtained fragments are clearly polarized; either they belong to Democrats, or to Republicans. This result confirms that during conflicts, hubs are centers of polarization.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Computer Simulation*
  • Conflict, Psychological*
  • Humans
  • Social Networking*

Grants and funding

The work was partially supported by the PL-Grid Infrastructure, as RENOIR Project by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 691152 and by Ministry of Science and Higher Education (Poland), grant Nos. 34/H2020/2016, 329025/PnH /2016. J.A.H. has been partially supported by the Russian Scientific Foundation, Agreement #17-71-30029 with co-financing of Bank Saint Petersburg.