Homophily influences ranking of minorities in social networks

Homophily can put minority groups at a disadvantage by restricting their ability to establish links with a majority group or to access novel information. Here, we show how this phenomenon can influence the ranking of minorities in examples of real-world networks with various levels of heterophily an...

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Veröffentlicht in:Scientific reports Jg. 8; H. 1; S. 11077 - 12
Hauptverfasser: Karimi, Fariba, Génois, Mathieu, Wagner, Claudia, Singer, Philipp, Strohmaier, Markus
Format: Journal Article
Sprache:Englisch
Veröffentlicht: London Nature Publishing Group UK 23.07.2018
Nature Publishing Group
Schlagworte:
639/705/1042
639/766/259
Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems
Computational science
Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability
Humanities and Social Sciences
Information theory and computation
Life Sciences
Minderheit
Minority & ethnic groups
multidisciplinary
Nonlinear Sciences
Physics
Physics and Society
Santé publique et épidémiologie
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Social behavior
Social interactions
Social networks
Social organization
Sociology
ISSN:2045-2322, 2045-2322
Online-Zugang:Volltext
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Zusammenfassung:Homophily can put minority groups at a disadvantage by restricting their ability to establish links with a majority group or to access novel information. Here, we show how this phenomenon can influence the ranking of minorities in examples of real-world networks with various levels of heterophily and homophily ranging from sexual contacts, dating contacts, scientific collaborations, and scientific citations. We devise a social network model with tunable homophily and group sizes, and demonstrate how the degree ranking of nodes from the minority group in a network is a function of (i) relative group sizes and (ii) the presence or absence of homophilic behaviour. We provide analytical insights on how the ranking of the minority can be improved to ensure the representativeness of the group and correct for potential biases. Our work presents a foundation for assessing the impact of homophilic and heterophilic behaviour on minorities in social networks.
Bibliographie:ObjectType-Article-1
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PMCID: PMC6056555
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-018-29405-7