EIGENVECTOR-BASED CENTRALITY MEASURES FOR TEMPORAL NETWORKS

• Published in: Multiscale modeling & simulation Vol. 15; no. 1; p. 537
• Main Authors: Taylor, Dane, Myers, Sean A, Clauset, Aaron, Porter, Mason A, Mucha, Peter J
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 2017
• Subjects: Ranking systems; 91D30; 05C82; Singular perturbation; 94C15; Eigenvector centrality; Temporal networks; 05C81; Multilayer networks; Hubs and authorities; 15A18
• ISSN: 1540-3459
• DOI: 10.1137/16M1066142

Numerous centrality measures have been developed to quantify the importances of nodes in time-independent networks, and many of them can be expressed as the leading eigenvector of some matrix. With the increasing availability of network data that changes in time, it is important to extend such eigenvector-based centrality measures to time-dependent networks. In this paper, we introduce a principled generalization of network centrality measures that is valid for any eigenvector-based centrality. We consider a temporal network with nodes as a sequence of layers that describe the network during different time windows, and we couple centrality matrices for the layers into a matrix of size × whose dominant eigenvector gives the centrality of each node at each time . We refer to this eigenvector and its components as a , as it reflects the importances of both the node and the time layer . We also introduce the concepts of and centralities, which facilitate the study of centrality trajectories over time. We find that the strength of coupling between layers is important for determining multiscale properties of centrality, such as localization phenomena and the time scale of centrality changes. In the strong-coupling regime, we derive expressions for , which are given by the zeroth-order terms of a singular perturbation expansion. We also study first-order terms to obtain , which concisely describe the magnitude of nodes' centrality changes over time. As examples, we apply our method to three empirical temporal networks: the United States Ph.D. exchange in mathematics, costarring relationships among top-billed actors during the Golden Age of Hollywood, and citations of decisions from the United States Supreme Court.