In most networks, there are elements that have a huge amount of direct connections to others, and these individuals tend to be rather important. They are called super-spreaders or hubs.
Have you ever found yourself less popular when compared to your friends? Interestingly, in any group of individuals, on average, people have fewer friends than their friends do, or at the very most, an equal number. Not more!
In the study of social networks, a key phenomena is the diffusion of information – how it travels from one individual to another across the network of people. An important question is how to identify the nodes with a high potential to spread information widely and deeper in the network.
To find the network communities, we need a mathematical equation that describes when a division of the network into communities meets these two criteria.
In this article, we discuss several ways to quantify the importance of nodes in a network. We will discuss how a simple game can help study this special property, and how it can help us in cases like reducing fake news.
