research-article

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Link recommendations: Their impact on network structure and minorities

Authors:

Antonio Ferrara,

Lisette Espin-Noboa,

Claudia WagnerAuthors Info & Claims

WebSci '22: Proceedings of the 14th ACM Web Science Conference 2022

Pages 228 - 238

https://doi.org/10.1145/3501247.3531583

Published: 26 June 2022 Publication History

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Abstract

Network-based people recommendation algorithms are widely employed on the Web to suggest new connections in social media or professional platforms. While such recommendations bring people together, the feedback loop between the algorithms and the changes in network structure may exacerbate social biases. These biases include rich-get-richer effects, filter bubbles, and polarization. However, social networks are diverse complex systems and recommendations may affect them differently, depending on their structural properties. In this work, we explore five people recommendation algorithms by systematically applying them over time to different synthetic networks. In particular, we measure to what extent these recommendations change the structure of bi-populated networks and show how these changes affect the minority group.

Our systematic experimentation helps to better understand when link recommendation algorithms are beneficial or harmful to minority groups in social networks. In particular, our findings suggest that, while all algorithms tend to close triangles and increase cohesion, all algorithms except Node2Vec are prone to favor and suggest nodes with high in-degree. Furthermore, we found that, especially when both classes are heterophilic, recommendation algorithms can reduce the visibility of minorities.

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Cited By

Alvarez JColmenarejo AElobaid AFabbrizzi SFahimi MFerrara AGhodsi SMougan CPapageorgiou IReyero PRusso MScott KState LZhao XRuggieri S(2024)Policy advice and best practices on bias and fairness in AIEthics and Information Technology10.1007/s10676-024-09746-w26:2Online publication date: 29-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10676-024-09746-w
Coupette CNeumann SGionis ASingh ASun YAkoglu LGunopulos DYan XKumar ROzcan FYe J(2023)Reducing Exposure to Harmful Content via Graph RewiringProceedings of the 29th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining10.1145/3580305.3599489(323-334)Online publication date: 6-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3580305.3599489
Cotta LBevilacqua BAhmed NRibeiro B(2023)Causal lifting and link predictionProceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences10.1098/rspa.2023.0121479:2276Online publication date: 30-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2023.0121
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Link recommendations: Their impact on network structure and minorities
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Collaborative and social computing
    1. Collaborative and social computing theory, concepts and paradigms
2. Information systems
  1. Information retrieval
    1. Retrieval tasks and goals
  2. Information systems applications
    1. Data mining

Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

WebSci '22: Proceedings of the 14th ACM Web Science Conference 2022

June 2022

479 pages

ISBN:9781450391917

DOI:10.1145/3501247

General Chairs:
Ricardo Baeza-Yates
Northeastern University, MA, USA & Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
,
Katrin Weller
GESIS & Center for Advanced Internet Studies, Germany
,
Organizing Chair:
Manuel Portela
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
,
Program Chairs:
Oshani Seneviratne
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, NY, USA
,
Ingmar Weber
Qatar Computing Research Institute, Qatar
,
Taha Yasseri
University College Dublin, Ireland
,
Publications Chairs:
Anna Bon
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
,
Srinath Srinivas
International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, India
,
Luis-Daniel Ibáñez
University of Southampton, UK

Copyright © 2022 Owner/Author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

Sponsors

SIGWEB: ACM Special Interest Group on Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Web

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 26 June 2022

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Österreichische Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft
European Union?s Horizon 2020

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WebSci '22

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SIGWEB

WebSci '22: 14th ACM Web Science Conference 2022

June 26 - 29, 2022

Barcelona, Spain

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Overall Acceptance Rate 245 of 933 submissions, 26%

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Websci '25

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Cited By

Alvarez JColmenarejo AElobaid AFabbrizzi SFahimi MFerrara AGhodsi SMougan CPapageorgiou IReyero PRusso MScott KState LZhao XRuggieri S(2024)Policy advice and best practices on bias and fairness in AIEthics and Information Technology10.1007/s10676-024-09746-w26:2Online publication date: 29-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10676-024-09746-w
Coupette CNeumann SGionis ASingh ASun YAkoglu LGunopulos DYan XKumar ROzcan FYe J(2023)Reducing Exposure to Harmful Content via Graph RewiringProceedings of the 29th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining10.1145/3580305.3599489(323-334)Online publication date: 6-Aug-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3580305.3599489
Cotta LBevilacqua BAhmed NRibeiro B(2023)Causal lifting and link predictionProceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences10.1098/rspa.2023.0121479:2276Online publication date: 30-Aug-2023
https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2023.0121
Brinkmann LBaumann FBonnefon JDerex MMüller TNussberger ACzaplicka AAcerbi AGriffiths THenrich JLeibo JMcElreath ROudeyer PStray JRahwan I(2023)Machine cultureNature Human Behaviour10.1038/s41562-023-01742-27:11(1855-1868)Online publication date: 20-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01742-2
Debono TSantos F(2023)The Effect of Link Recommendation Algorithms on Network Centrality DisparitiesComplex Networks XIV10.1007/978-3-031-28276-8_7(74-85)Online publication date: 30-Mar-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28276-8_7
Jaramillo AMontes FMenezes R(2023)Nature vs. Nurture in Science: The Effect of Researchers Segregation on Papers’ Citation HistoriesComplex Networks XIV10.1007/978-3-031-28276-8_13(141-154)Online publication date: 30-Mar-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28276-8_13
Wang SJi HYin MWang YLu MSun H(2022)Enhanced Graph Learning for Recommendation via Causal InferenceMathematics10.3390/math1011188110:11(1881)Online publication date: 31-May-2022
https://doi.org/10.3390/math10111881
Wang XVarol OEliassi-Rad T(2022)Information access equality on generative models of complex networksApplied Network Science10.1007/s41109-022-00494-87:1Online publication date: 2-Aug-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/s41109-022-00494-8

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