Overlapping Community Detection Optimization and Nash Equilibrium

Community detection in social networks is the focus of many algorithms. Recent methods aimed at optimizing the so-called modularity function proceed by maximizing relations within communities while minimizing inter-community relations. However, given the NP-completeness of the problem, these algorithms are heuristics that do not guarantee an optimum. In this paper, we introduce a new algorithm along with a function that takes an approximate solution and modifies it in order to reach an optimum. This reassignment function is considered a `potential function' and becomes a necessary condition to asserting that the computed optimum is indeed a Nash Equilibrium. We also use this function to simultaneously show two detection and visualization modes: partitioned and overlaped communities, of great value in revealing interesting features in a social network. Our approach is successfully illustrated through several experiments on either real unipartite, multipartite or directed graphs of medium and large-sized datasets.