Abstract

Understanding the forces governing human behavior and social dynamics is a challenging problem. Individuals’ decisions and actions are affected by interlaced factors, such as physical location, homophily, and social ties. In this paper, we propose to examine the role that distinct communities, linked to these factors, play as sources of social influence. The ego network is typically used in the social influence analysis. Our hypothesis is that individuals are embedded in communities not only related to their direct social relationships, but that involve different and complex forces. We analyze physical, homophily, and social communities to evaluate their relation with subjects’ behavior. We prove that social influence is correlated with these communities, and each one of them is (differently) significant for individuals. We define community-based features, which reflect the subject involvement in these groups, and …

Date

October 21, 2025

Authors

Luca Luceri, Alberto Vancheri, Torsten Braun, Silvia. Giordano

Conference

Proceedings of the 6th International Conference of Complex Networks and their Application, 2017