Tie Strength Analysis: New Metrics and Open Problems

Resumo

The study of social ties has lead to building rigorous models that reveal the evolution of social networks and their dynamism. In this context, a central aspect is the strength of ties, which allows the study of the roles of relationships. Here, besides analyzing the strength of co-authorship ties, we also present a set of metrics and algorithms to measure such strength. Initial studies of social networks have emphasized the importance of properly measuring the strength of social ties to understand social behaviors [Granovetter 1973, Newman 2001]. Also, the study of social ties is fundamental for building rigorous models that reveal the evolution of social networks (SN) and the dynamics of social exchange [Aiello et al. 2014]. More recently, analyzing tie strength has allowed to investigate the roles of relationships including ranking for influence detection [Freire and Figueiredo 2011], as well as its influence in communication patterns [Wiese et al. 2015] and team formation [Castilho et al. 2017].