Relations of society concepts and religions from Wikipedia networks

TL;DR

This study uses the Google matrix and reduced Google matrix algorithms to analyze Wikipedia networks across 8 languages, revealing the influence and relations of society concepts and religions within and across cultures.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of the reduced Google matrix to compare cultural perspectives on society and religion across multiple Wikipedia language editions.

Findings

Identified 5 influential poles for society concepts and religions.

Found stronger intra-block transitions than inter-block transitions.

Quantified cultural differences through inter-edition correlation analysis.

Abstract

We analyze the Google matrix of directed networks of Wikipedia articles related to 8 recent Wikipedia language editions representing different cultures (English, Arabic, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, Chinese). Using the reduced Google matrix algorithm we determine relations and interactions of 23 society concepts and 17 religions represented by their respective articles for each of the 8 editions. The effective Markov transitions are found to be more intense inside the two blocks of society concepts and religions while transitions between the blocks are significantly reduced. We establish 5 poles of influence for society concepts (Law, Society, Communism, Liberalism, Capitalism) as well as 5 poles for religions (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Chinese folk religion) and determine how they affect other entries. We compute inter edition correlations for different key quantities providing a quantitative analysis of the differences or the proximity of views of the 8 cultures with respect to the selected society concepts and religions.