Burstiness and tie reinforcement in time varying social networks

TL;DR

This paper presents a dynamic network model capturing burstiness and tie reinforcement in social networks, providing analytical insights and empirical validation to understand social dynamics and their impact on spreading processes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel time-varying network model that analytically describes the interplay of burstiness and tie reinforcement in social networks.

Findings

Good agreement between analytical predictions and empirical data.

Identification of a phase diagram driven by competing social processes.

Framework for classifying social network dynamics.

Abstract

We introduce a time-varying network model accounting for burstiness and tie reinforcement observed in social networks. The analytical solution indicates a non-trivial phase diagram determined by the competition of the leading terms of the two processes. We test our results against numerical simulations, and compare the analytical predictions with an empirical dataset finding good agreements between them. The presented framework can be used to classify the dynamical features of real social networks and to gather new insights about the effects of social dynamics on ongoing spreading processes.