2003/12/09 by Guido Caldarelli, F. Coccetti, Fabrizio Coccetti +1
Physics and Astronomy · Social Sciences · #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.70.027102
4 pages, 2 .eps figures
arxiv created 2003/12/09 · openalex publication_date 2004/08/17 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Many social, technological, and biological interactions involve network relationships whose outcome intimately depends on the structure of the network and on the strengths of the connections. Yet, although much information is now available concerning the structure of many networks, the strengths are more difficult to measure. Here we show that, for one particular social network, notably the e-mail network, a suitable measure of the strength of the connections can be available. We also propose a simple mechanism, based on positive feedback and reciprocity, that can explain the observed behavior and that hints toward specific dynamics of formation and reinforcement of network connections. Network data from contexts different from social sciences indicate that power-law, and generally broad, distributions of the connection strength are ubiquitous, and the proposed mechanism has a wide range of applicability.