Quantifying triadic closure in multi-edge social networks

ABSTRACT

In social networks, edges often form closed triangles or triads. Standard approaches to measuring triadic closure, however, fail for multi-edge networks, because they do not consider that triads can be formed by edges of different multiplicity. We propose a novel measure of triadic closure for multi-edge networks based on a shared partner statistic and demonstrate that this measure can detect meaningful closure in synthetic and empirical multi-edge networks, where conventional approaches fail. This work is a cornerstone in driving inferential network analyses from the analysis of binary networks towards the analyses of multi-edge and weighted networks, which offer a more realistic representation of social interactions and relations.

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