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Emergence of Social Balance in Signed Networks

  • Andreia Sofia TeixeiraEmail author
  • Francisco C. Santos
  • Alexandre P. Francisco
Conference paper
First Online:
Part of the Springer Proceedings in Complexity book series (SPCOM)

Abstract

Social media often reveals a complex interplay between positive and negative ties. Yet, the origin of such complex patterns of interaction remains largely elusive. In this paper we study how third parties may sway our perception of others. Our model relies on the analysis of all triadic relations taking into account the influence and relations with common friends, through large-scale simulations. We show that a simple peer-influence mechanism, based on balance theory of social sciences, is able to promptly increase the degree of balance of a signed network—with balance defined as the fraction of positive cycles—irrespectively of the network we start from. Additionally, our results indicate that the tendency towards a balanced state also depends on the network connectivity and on the initial distribution of signs.

Keywords

Balance theory Network analysis Social networks 
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Notes

Acknowledgements

This work was partly supported by national funds through Universidade de Lisboa and FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, under projects TUBITAK/0004/2014, PTDC/EEI-SII/5081/2014, PTDC/EEI-SII/1973/2014, PTDC/MAT/STA/335 8/2014 and UID/CEC/50021/2013.

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Copyright information

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  • Andreia Sofia Teixeira
    • 1
    Email author
  • Francisco C. Santos
    • 1
  • Alexandre P. Francisco
    • 1
  1. 1.INESC-ID/Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de LisboaLisbonPortugal

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