Correlation between Triadic Closure and Homophily Formed over Location-Based Social Networks

Abstract

Social Internet of Things (SIoT) is a variation of social networks that adopt the property of peer-to-peer networks, in which connections between the things and social actors are automatically established. SIoT is a part of various organizations that inherit the social interaction, and these organizations include industries, institutions, and other establishments. Triadic closure and homophily are the most commonly used measures to investigate social networks’ formation and nature, where both measures are used exclusively or with statistical models. The triadic closure patterns are mapped for actors’ communication behavior over a location-based social network, affecting the homophily. In this study, we investigate triads emergence in homophilic social networks. This evaluation is based on the empirical review of triads within social networks (SNs) formed on Big Data. We utilized a large location-based dataset for an in-depth analysis, the Chinese telecommunication-based anonymized call detail records (CDRs). Two other openly available datasets, Brightkite and Gowalla, were also studied. We identified and proposed three social triad classes in a homophilic network to feature the correlation between social triads and homophily. The study opened a promising research direction that relates the variation of homophily based on closure triads nature. The homophilic triads are further categorized into transitive and intransitive groups. As our concluding research objective, we examined the relative triadic throughput within a location-based social network for the given datasets. The research study attains significant results highlighting the positive connection between homophily and a specific social triad class.