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The long-term impact of ranking algorithms in growing networks

Zhang, Shilun; Medo, Matúš; Lü, Linyuan; Mariani, Manuel (2019). The long-term impact of ranking algorithms in growing networks. Information Sciences, 488:257-271.

Abstract

When users search online for content, they are constantly exposed to rankings. For example, web search results are presented as a ranking of relevant websites, and online bookstores often show us lists of best-selling books. While popularity-based ranking algorithms (like Google’s PageRank) have been extensively studied in previous works, we still lack a clear understanding of their potential systemic consequences. In this work, we fill this gap by introducing a new model of network growth that allows us to compare the properties of networks generated under the influence of different ranking algorithms. We show that by correcting for the omnipresent age bias of popularity-based ranking algorithms, the resulting networks exhibit a significantly larger agreement between the nodes’ inherent quality and their long-term popularity, and a less concentrated popularity distribution. To further promote popularity diversity, we introduce and validate a perturbation of the original rankings where a small number of randomly-selected nodes are promoted to the top of the ranking. Our findings move the first steps toward a model-based understanding of the long-term impact of popularity-based ranking algorithms, and our novel framework could be used to design improved information filtering tools.

Additional indexing

Item Type:Journal Article, refereed, original work
Communities & Collections:03 Faculty of Economics > Department of Business Administration
08 Research Priority Programs > Social Networks
Dewey Decimal Classification:330 Economics
Scopus Subject Areas:Physical Sciences > Software
Physical Sciences > Control and Systems Engineering
Physical Sciences > Theoretical Computer Science
Physical Sciences > Computer Science Applications
Social Sciences & Humanities > Information Systems and Management
Physical Sciences > Artificial Intelligence
Scope:Discipline-based scholarship (basic research)
Language:English
Date:13 March 2019
Deposited On:13 Jun 2019 07:25
Last Modified:21 Oct 2024 01:39
Publisher:Elsevier
ISSN:0020-0255
OA Status:Closed
Publisher DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ins.2019.03.021
Other Identification Number:merlin-id:17705

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