Models, methods and network topology: Experimental design for the study of interference
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Jake Bowers, Bruce A. Desmarais, Mark Frederickson, Nahomi Ichino, Hsuan-Wei Lee, Simi WangAbstractHow should a network experiment be designed to achieve high statistical power? Experimental treatments on networks may spread. Randomizing assignment of treatment to nodes enhances learning about the counterfactual causal effects of a social network experiment and also requires new methodology (ex. Aronow and Samii, 2017a, Bowers et al., 2013, Toulis and Kao, 2013). In this paper we show that the way in which a treatment propagates across a social network...
Source: Social Networks - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Detecting node propensity changes in the dynamic degree corrected stochastic block model
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Lisha Yu, William H. Woodall, Kwok-Leung TsuiAbstractMany applications involve dynamic networks for which a sequence of snapshots of network structure is available over time. Studying the evolution of node propensity over time can be important in exploring and analyzing these networks. In this paper, we propose a multivariate surveillance plan to monitor node propensity in the dynamic degree corrected stochastic block model. The method is flexible enough to detect anomalous nodes that arise from different mechanisms, including individual change, indivi...
Source: Social Networks - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Birds of a feather scam together: Trustworthiness homophily in a business network
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Mauro Barone, Michele CosciaAbstractEstimating the trustworthiness of a set of actors when all the available information is provided by the actors themselves is a hard problem. When two actors have conflicting reports about each other, how do we establish which of the two (if any) deserves our trust? In this paper, we model this scenario as a network problem: actors are nodes in a network and their reports about each other are the edges of the network. To estimate their trustworthiness levels, we develop an iterative framework which looks at all the re...
Source: Social Networks - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Trading favors—Examining the temporal dynamics of reciprocity in congressional collaborations using relational event models
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Laurence BrandenbergerAbstractThe norm of reciprocity shapes social interactions over time and should therefore be analyzed using longitudinal designs. This paper examines the temporal dynamics of reciprocity in the setting of legislative cosponsorship in the 113th U.S. Congress (2013–2015). Rather than aggregating cosponsoring events into network snapshots, cosponsoring events are ordered in time and reflect an event sequence of members supporting bills at distinct points in time. The norm of reciprocity is tested to see if it affects (a) new collab...
Source: Social Networks - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Referrals and information flow in networks increase discrimination: A laboratory experiment
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Károly Takács, Giangiacomo Bravo, Flaminio SquazzoniAbstractReferrals and information flow distort market mechanisms of hiring in the labor market, but they might assist employers under asymmetric information in finding better alternatives. This paper investigates whether an impartial information flow between employers in a cyclic network structure could generate more discrimination than when no information is exchanged between employers. We set up an artificial labor market in which there was no average quality difference between two categories of w...
Source: Social Networks - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Upward contacts in everyday life: Benefits of reaching hierarchical relations in ego-centered networks
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Yang-chih Fu, Thijs A. Velema, Jing-Shiang HwangAbstractRecent studies have inspired inquiries about what circumstances allow people to gain from interactions with those who rank higher than themselves in the social hierarchy. We examine how self-reported benefits of such upward contacts vary by tie strength and network structures in everyday life. Data were drawn from contact diaries that 137 individuals recorded over seven months in 2014; these diaries captured unique features of 94,353 one-on-one contacts that 137 diary keepers made, along with the ...
Source: Social Networks - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Social capital of entrepreneurs in a developing country: The effect of gender on access to and requests for resources
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Giacomo Solano, Gerrit RooksAbstractThis paper addresses gender differences in the social capital of entrepreneurs in a developing country. Social networks are often an important asset for accessing resources; however, they may also be a liability in developing countries, since entrepreneurs are often expected to support their contacts. Using a recent survey among urban and rural Ugandan entrepreneurs, we focus on the financial resources that entrepreneurs can obtain from their contacts on the one hand, and requests for financial support made to the en...
Source: Social Networks - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
State power and elite autonomy in a networked civil society: The board interlocking of Chinese non-profits
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Ji Ma, Simon DeDeoAbstractIn response to failures of central planning, the Chinese government has experimented not only with free-market trade zones, but with allowing non-profit foundations to operate in a decentralized fashion. A network study shows how these foundations have connected together by sharing board members, in a structural parallel to what is seen in corporations in the United States and Europe. This board interlocking leads to the emergence of an elite group with privileged network positions. While the presence of government officials o...
Source: Social Networks - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Heating up the debate? Measuring fragmentation and polarisation in a German climate change hyperlink network
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Thomas HäusslerAbstractResearch into polarisation on the internet has so far primarily focused on contentious issues and yielded contradictory results. Shifting the focus to a non-contentious setting, this article combines community detection with brokerage analysis and exponential random graph models to assess the degree of polarisation at different levels of a German hyperlink network on climate change. Although homophily accounts for a moderate degree of polarisation at the top level of the network, the communities reveal that other factors prove m...
Source: Social Networks - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
A concept for measuring network proximity of regions in R&D networks
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Iris WanzenböckAbstractThis paper proposes a new measure for assessing the network proximity between aggregated units, based on disaggregated information on the network distance of actors. Specific focus is on R&D network structures between regions. We introduce a weighted version of the proximity measure, related to the idea that direct and indirect linkages carry different types of knowledge. First-order proximity arising from direct cross-regional linkages is distinguished from higher-order network proximity, resulting from indirect linkages in the...
Source: Social Networks - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The contagion effects of repeated activation in social networks
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Pablo Piedrahita, Javier Borge-Holthoefer, Yamir Moreno, Sandra González-BailónAbstractDemonstrations, protests, riots, and shifts in public opinion respond to the coordinating potential of communication networks. Digital technologies have turned interpersonal networks into massive, pervasive structures that constantly pulsate with information. Here, we propose a model that aims to analyze the contagion dynamics that emerge in networks when repeated activation is allowed, that is, when actors can engage recurrently in a collective effort. We analyze ...
Source: Social Networks - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
A correction: The β-ranking and the β-measure for directed networks: Axiomatic characterizations
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Yan-An Hwang (Source: Social Networks)
Source: Social Networks - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Erratum to “Revisiting asymmetric marriage rules” [Soc. Netw. 52 (2017) 261–269]
Publication date: July 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 54Author(s): Philippe Ramirez, Stéphane Legendre (Source: Social Networks)
Source: Social Networks - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Patterns of co-membership: Techniques for identifying subgraph composition
Publication date: October 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 55Author(s): Sean M. Fitzhugh, Carter T. ButtsAbstractDifferent social processes give rise to network structures with distinctive properties. In this paper our goal is to identify the social processes that give rise to distinct network structures (specifically, subgroups). We examine particular structural meta-relations by identifying the properties of individuals associated with specific subgroups. Clues to the process of group formation and the context in which these groups form and persist may be extracted from the properties of individuals in those groups. F...
Source: Social Networks - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Structural holes and bridging in two-mode networks
Publication date: October 2018Source: Social Networks, Volume 55Author(s): Jake Burchard, Benjamin CornwellAbstractSocial networks are often structured in such a way that there are gaps, or “structural holes,” between regions. Some actors are in the position to bridge or span these gaps, giving rise to individual advantages relating to brokerage, gatekeeping, access to non-redundant contacts, and control over network flows. The most widely used measures of a given actor’s bridging potential gauge the extent to which that actor is directly connected to others who are otherwise not well connected to each other. Unfortu...
Source: Social Networks - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
