A Critical Review of Centrality Measures in Social Networks

Authors

Andrea Landherr, University of AugsburgFollow
Bettina Friedl, University of AugsburgFollow
Julia Heidemann, University of AugsburgFollow

Document Type

State of the Art

Abstract

Social networks are currently gaining increasing impact in the light of the ongoing growth of web-based services like facebook.com. One major challenge for the economically successful implementation of selected management activities such as viral marketing is the identification of key persons with an outstanding structural position within the network. For this purpose, social network analysis provides a lot of measures for quantifying a member’s interconnectedness within social networks. In this context, our paper shows the state of the art with regard to centrality measures for social networks. Due to strongly differing results with respect to the quality of different centrality measures, this paper also aims at illustrating the tremendous importance of a reflected utilization of existing centrality measures. For this purpose, the paper analyzes five centrality measures commonly discussed in literature on the basis of three simple requirements for the behavior of centrality measures.

Recommended Citation

Landherr, Andrea; Friedl, Bettina; and Heidemann, Julia (2010) "A Critical Review of Centrality Measures in Social Networks," Business & Information Systems Engineering: Vol. 2: Iss. 6, 371-385.
Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/bise/vol2/iss6/5