Identify influential spreaders in complex networks, the role of neighborhood

Ying Liu, Ming Tang, Tao Zhou and Younghae Do

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2016, vol. 452, issue C, 289-298

Abstract: Identifying the most influential spreaders is an important issue in controlling the spreading processes in complex networks. Centrality measures are used to rank node influence in a spreading dynamics. Here we propose a node influence measure based on the centrality of a node and its neighbors’ centrality, which we call the neighborhood centrality. By simulating the spreading processes in six real-world networks, we find that the neighborhood centrality greatly outperforms the basic centrality of a node such as the degree and coreness in ranking node influence and identifying the most influential spreaders. Interestingly, we discover a saturation effect in considering the neighborhood of a node, which is not the case of the larger the better. Specifically speaking, considering the 2-step neighborhood of nodes is a good choice that balances the cost and performance. If further step of neighborhood is taken into consideration, there is no obvious improvement and even decrease in the ranking performance. The saturation effect may be informative for studies that make use of the local structure of a node to determine its importance in the network.

Keywords: Epidemic spreading; Influential spreader; Neighborhood centrality; Saturation effect (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437116001941
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:452:y:2016:i:c:p:289-298

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2016.02.028

Access Statistics for this article

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications is currently edited by K. A. Dawson, J. O. Indekeu, H.E. Stanley and C. Tsallis

More articles in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().