2013/09/30 by Demetris Antoniades, Constantine Dovrolis · 46 citations
Computer Science · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Artificial intelligence #Biology #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Complex network #Computer network #Computer science #Data science #Dynamics (music) #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #Evolutionary biology #Evolutionary dynamics #Focus (optics) #Function (biology) #Mathematics #Network dynamics #Network topology #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Population #Probabilistic logic #Psychology #Reciprocity (cultural anthropology) #Social media #Social network (sociolinguistics) #Social psychology #Sociology #Theoretical computer science #Topology (electrical circuits) #World Wide Web #cs.SI #physics.soc-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1186/s40649-015-0023-6
published in Computational Social Networks 2(1) (Springer Science+Business Media) · 11 pages, 7 figures
arxiv created 2014/02/01 · openalex publication_date 2015/07/30 · arxiv updated 2015/08/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Complex networks often exhibit co-evolutionary dynamics, meaning that the network topology and the state of nodes or links are coupled, affecting each other in overlapping time scales. We focus on the co-evolutionary dynamics of online social networks, and on Twitter in particular. Monitoring the activity of thousands of Twitter users in real-time, and tracking their followers and tweets/retweets, we propose a method to infer new retweet-driven follower relations. The formation of such relations is much more likely than the exogenous creation of new followers in the absence of any retweets. We identify the most significant factors (reciprocity and the number of retweets that a potential new follower receives) and propose a simple probabilistic model of this effect. We also discuss the implications of such co-evolutionary dynamics on the topology and function of a social network. Finally, we briefly consider a second instance of co-evolutionary dynamics on Twitter, namely the possibility that a user removes a follower link after receiving a tweet or retweet from the corresponding followee.