A node role is a subjective characterization of the part it plays in a network structure. Knowing the role of a node is important for many link mining applications. For example, in Web search, nodes that are deemed to be authorities on a given topic are often found to be most relevant to the user's queries. There are a number of metrics that can be used to assign roles to individual nodes in a network, including degree, closeness, and betweenness. None of these metrics, however, take into account the community structure that underlies the network. In this paper we define community-based roles that the nodes can assume (ambassadors, big fish, loners, and bridges) and show how existing link mining techniques can be improved by knowledge of such roles. A new community-based metric is introduced for estimating the number of communities linked to a node. Using this metric and a modification of degree, we show how to assign community-based roles to the nodes. We also illustrate the benefits of knowing the community-based node roles in the context of link-based classification and influence maximization.

@inproceedings{scripps2007roles, author = {Scripps, Jerry and Tan, Pang-Ning and Esfahanian, Abdol-Hossein}, title = {Node roles and community structure in networks}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 9th WebKDD and 1st SNA-KDD 2007 workshop on Web mining and social network analysis}, series = {WebKDD/SNA-KDD '07}, publisher = {ACM}, address = {New York, NY, USA}, year = {2007}, pages = {26--35}, url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1348549.1348553}, doi = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1348549.1348553}, isbn = {978-1-59593-848-0}, keywords = {ambassador, bigFish, bridge, community, conferator, loner, network, networks, node, sna, social, structure, roles}, abstract = {A node role is a subjective characterization of the part it plays in a network structure. Knowing the role of a node is important for many link mining applications. For example, in Web search, nodes that are deemed to be authorities on a given topic are often found to be most relevant to the user's queries. There are a number of metrics that can be used to assign roles to individual nodes in a network, including degree, closeness, and betweenness. None of these metrics, however, take into account the community structure that underlies the network. In this paper we define community-based roles that the nodes can assume (ambassadors, big fish, loners, and bridges) and show how existing link mining techniques can be improved by knowledge of such roles. A new community-based metric is introduced for estimating the number of communities linked to a node. Using this metric and a modification of degree, we show how to assign community-based roles to the nodes. We also illustrate the benefits of knowing the community-based node roles in the context of link-based classification and influence maximization.} }

%0 = inproceedings %A = Scripps, Jerry and Tan, Pang-Ning and Esfahanian, Abdol-Hossein %B = Proceedings of the 9th WebKDD and 1st SNA-KDD 2007 workshop on Web mining and social network analysis %C = New York, NY, USA %D = 2007 %I = ACM %T = Node roles and community structure in networks %U = http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1348549.1348553