Qualities and Inequalities in Online Social Networks through the Lens of the Generalized Friendship Paradox

TL;DR

This paper investigates the generalized friendship paradox in online social networks, revealing its high prevalence on Twitter and its roots in network hierarchy rather than individual node attributes.

Contribution

It introduces new measures of node qualities, analyzes their impact on the paradox, and demonstrates the collective nature of the phenomenon in hierarchical networks.

Findings

High prevalence of the paradox on Twitter (up to 90%)

Hierarchy in network connections explains the paradox

Large fraction of nodes experience the paradox without degree-attribute correlation

Abstract

The friendship paradox is the phenomenon that in social networks, people on average have fewer friends than their friends do. The generalized friendship paradox is an extension to attributes other than the number of friends. The friendship paradox and its generalized version have gathered recent attention due to the information they provide about network structure and local inequalities. In this paper, we propose several measures of nodal qualities which capture different aspects of their activities and influence in online social networks. Using these measures we analyse the prevalence of the generalized friendship paradox over Twitter and we report high levels of prevalence (up to over 90\% of nodes). We contend that this prevalence of the friendship paradox and its generalized version arise because of the hierarchical nature of the connections in the network. This hierarchy is nested as opposed to being star-like. We conclude that these paradoxes are collective phenomena not created merely by a minority of well-connected or high-attribute nodes. Moreover, our results show that a large fraction of individuals can experience the generalized friendship paradox even in the absence of a significant correlation between degrees and attributes.