Research Methods in Social Network Analysis

by Marion E. Hambrick (Author)
Social network analysis is a methodological tool used to investigate social networks, or collections of individuals, groups, or organizations and their shared relationships

Social networks provide a powerful abstraction of the structure and dynamics of diverse kinds of people or people-to-technology interaction. Web 2.0 has enabled a new generation of web-based communities, social networks, and folksonomies to facilitate collaboration among different communities.

This book focuses on the following three key topics in social network large-scale decision-making: structure-heterogeneous information fusion, clustering analysis with multiple measurement attributes, and consensus building considering trust loss. To address the aggregation and distance measurement of structure-heterogeneous evaluation information, we propose a fusion method based on trust and behavior analysis. Then, two clustering algorithms are put forward, including trust Cop-K-means clustering algorithm and compatibility distance-oriented off-center clustering algorithm. The above clustering algorithms emphasize the similarity of opinions and social relationships as important measurement attributes of clustering. Finally, this book explores the impact of trust loss originating from social relationships on the CRP and develops two consensus-reaching models, namely the improved minimum-cost consensus model that takes into account voluntary trust loss and the punishment-driven consensus-reaching model. Some case studies, a large number of numerical experiments, and comparative analyses are provided in this book to demonstrate the characteristics and advantages of the proposed methods and models.