Multilayer network analyses as a toolkit for measuring social structure

The formalization of multilayer networks allows for new ways to measure sociality in complex social systems, including groups of animals. The same mathematical representation and methods are widely applicable across fields and study systems, and a network can represent drastically different types of data. As such, in order to apply analyses and interpret the results in a meaningful way the researcher must have a deep understanding of what their network is representing and what parts of it are being measured by a given analysis. Multilayer social networks can represent social structure with more detail than is often present in single layer networks, including multiple “types” of individuals, interactions, or relationships, and the extent to which these types are interdependent. Multilayer networks can also encompass a wider range of social scales, which can help overcome complications that are inherent to measuring sociality. In this paper, I dissect multilayer networks into the parts that correspond to different components of social structures. I then discuss common pitfalls to avoid across different stages of multilayer network analyses—some novel and some that always exist in social network analysis but are magnified in multi-layer representations. This paper serves as a primer for building a customized toolkit of multilayer network analyses, to probe components of social structure in animal social systems.

OPINION DIFFUSION ON MULTILAYER SOCIAL NETWORKS

In this paper, to reveal the influence of multilayer network structure on opinion diffusion in social networks, we study an opinion dynamics model based on DeGroot model on multilayer networks. We find that if the influence matrix integrating the information of connectedness for each layer and correlation between layers is strongly connected and aperiodic, all agents’ opinions will reach a consensus. However, if there are stubborn agents in the networks, regular agents’ opinions will finally be confined to the convex combinations of the stubborn agents’. Specifically, if all stubborn agents hold the same opinion, even if the agents only exist on a certain layer, their opinions will diffuse to the entire multilayer networks. This paper not only characterizes the influence of multilayer network topology and agent attribute on opinion diffusion in a holistic way, but also demonstrates the importance of coupling agents which play an indispensable role in some social and economic situations.