Skip to main content
Article
Small-World Properties of Facebook Group Networks
Complex Systems
  • Jason Wohlgemuth
  • Mihaela Teodora Matache, University of Nebraska at Omaha
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2014
Disciplines
Abstract

Small-world networks permeate modern society. In this paper we present a methodology for creating and analyzing a practically limitless number of networks exhibiting small-world network properties. More precisely, we analyze networks whose nodes are Facebook groups sharing a common word in the group name and whose links are mutual members in any two groups. By analyzing several numerical characteristics of single networks and network aggregations, we investigate how the small-world properties scale with a coarsening of the network. We show that Facebook group networks have small average path lengths and large clustering coefficients that do not vanish with increased network size, thus exhibiting small-world features. The degree distributions cannot be characterized completely by a power law, and the clustering coefficients are significantly larger than what would be expected for random networks, while the average shortest paths have consistently small values characteristic of random graphs. At the same time, the average connectivity increases as a power of the network size, while the average clustering coefficients and average path lengths do not exhibit a clear scaling with the size of the network. Our results are somewhat similar to what has been found in previous studies of the networks of individual Facebook users.

Comments

This article is reused with permission from the publisher. Please visit the journal's website here: https://www.complex-systems.com/.

Citation Information
Jason Wohlgemuth and Mihaela Teodora Matache. "Small-World Properties of Facebook Group Networks" Complex Systems Vol. 23 Iss. 3 (2014)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/mihaela-velcsov/21/