Week 11 - Communities in Networks

Dad Joke

The guy who stole my diary died yesterday.

My thoughts are with his family.

What is a component? (Hint: there’s often one “giant” component)
What is a clique?
What is the weakness of cliques as a way of identifying groups?
What is a k-plex? (Hint: related to cliques)
The goal of most community detection algorithms is high modularity. What does that mean?

Why do groups often have a core and a periphery?
Given some of the other theories we’ve talked about, how would you expect the periphery to differ from the core?
What role does the periphery have in protests (Barberá et al. reading)?
What is one way to identify who is in the core or periphery?

How does betweenness help with community detection?
Is there a situation in which those with less knowledge or experience create the core, and the more knowledgeable and experienced create the periphery?
Are communities something that naturally exist or are they partly created by methods we use to detect them?
Is “slacktivism” actually necessary for large-scale social movements to succeed?
How scalable are community detection algorithms?

If networks determine access to information and opportunities, is inequality inevitable?
Can the same network structure mean different things in different fields, such as social science and biology? If so, is there a common ground between these different kinds of networks?
From the perspective of a marketing or advertising professional, would it be better to focus time and resources on the core group (influencers, celebrities, etc.) or the periphery (new people with the potential to share it and start a movement)? Which one is arguably more important?