How do signs organize in directed signed social networks?

TL;DR

This paper introduces a reshuffled approach to analyze how positive and negative signs are organized in real directed signed social networks, revealing homogeneous social and dynamic statuses at original sign configurations.

Contribution

It presents a novel reshuffled method to study sign organization and demonstrates that real networks exhibit minimal entropy and maximum homogeneity at the original sign arrangement.

Findings

Entropy of social status reaches minimum at original signs

Homogeneity of social and dynamic status is maximized at original signs

Method provides new tools to understand sign organization in social networks

Abstract

We introduce a reshuffled approach to empirical analyze signs' organization in real directed signed social networks of Epinions and Slashdots from the global viewpoint. In the reshuffled approach, each negative link has probability $p_{rs}$ to exchange its sign with another positive link chosen randomly. Through calculating the entropies of social status ($S_{in}$ and $S_{out}$) of and mimicking opinion formation of the majority-rule model on each reshuffled signed network, we find that $S_{in}$ and $S_{out}$ reach their own minimum values as well as the magnetization $|m^{*}|$ reaches its maximum value at $p_{rs}=0$. Namely, individuals share the homogeneous properties of social status and dynamic status in real directed signed social networks. Our present work provides some interesting tools and perspective to understand the signs' organization in signed social networks.