A message passing algorithm for the evaluation of social influence

Abstract

In this paper, we define a new measure of node centrality in social networks, the Harmonic Influence Centrality, which emerges naturally in the study of social influence over networks. Next, we introduce a distributed message passing algorithm to compute the Harmonic Influence Centrality of each node: its design is based on an intuitive analogy between social and electrical networks. Although our convergence analysis assumes the networks to have no cycle, the algorithm can be successfully applied on general graphs.