Revealing Bridges in Social Networks
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2024
Abstract
Social groups and networks are ubiquitous, and each network member typically has a role or roles in associated interactions. One such member identified in social network literature is a bridge, which connects two or more groups, and is an element of only one of the groups; inferred from literature (e.g., Granovetter, 1973; Rogers and Kincaid, 1981) is the notion that bridges play a key role in networks. At different times and for various reasons, network and group components may be unrevealed. An example is a terrorist network; the terrorists may know who comprises their network, but a military or security organization that is attempting to dismantle the organization is unlikely to know all of the individuals and/or their interactions and roles. Consequently, the ability to characterize and detect bridges could be valuable in the national security structure's efforts since such members can play a key role in networks. This article addresses the associated problem: Given a network of groups, for which the information about each group consists of individuals, their attributes, and (only) their intra-group relations, identify which individual (or individuals) is a bridge node. Additionally, an approach is presented for detecting that a bridge is missing from a group, i.e., inferring the existence of a bridge from group data that does not contain the bridge in its membership, the bridge's attributes, nor the bridge's contacts. Accordingly, a method for recreating the ground truth network once a bridge's existence has been detected is given. Lastly, the potential application of these approaches to networks other than social networks is discussed.
DOI
Source Publication
Military Operations Research
Recommended Citation
Leinart, J. A., & Deckro, R. F. (2024). Revealing Bridges in Social Networks. Military Operations Research, 29(1), 75–94.
Comments
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