Self-organization leads to hierarchical modularity in an internet community

Hallinan, J

doi:10.1007/978-3-540-45224-9_122

Self-organization leads to hierarchical modularity in an internet community

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Jennifer Hallinan

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Abstract

Many naturally-occurring networks share topological characteristics such as scale-free connectivity and a modular organization. It has recently been suggested that a hierarchically modular organization may be another such ubiquitous characteristic. In this paper we introduce a coherence metric for the quantification of structural modularity, and use this metric to demonstrate that a self-organized social network derived from Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel interactions exhibits measurable hierarchical modularity, reflecting an underlying hierarchical neighbourhood structure in the social network.