Strategic Networks: Information Dissemination and Link Formation Among Self-Interested Agents

This paper presents the first study of the endogenous formation of networks by strategic, self-interested agents who benefit from producing and disseminating information. This work departs from previous works on network formation (especially in the economics literature) which assume that agents benefit only by acquiring information produced by other agents. The strategic production and dissemination of information have striking consequences. We show first that the network structure that emerges (in equilibrium) typically displays a core-periphery structure, with the few agents at the core playing the role of eeconnectorsee, creating and maintaining links to the agents at the periphery. We then determine conditions under which the networks that emerge are minimally connected and have short network diameters (properties that are important for efficiency). Finally, we show that the number of agents who produce information and the total amount of information produced in the network grow at the same rate as the agent population; this is in stark contrast to the "law of the few" that had been established in previous works which do not consider information dissemination.

[1]  Zhu Han,et al.  Coalition Formation Games for Distributed Cooperation Among Roadside Units in Vehicular Networks , 2010, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[2]  Henning Schulzrinne,et al.  Effects of power conservation, wireless coverage and cooperation on data dissemination among mobile devices , 2001, MobiHoc '01.

[3]  Stratis Ioannidis,et al.  Optimal and scalable distribution of content updates over a mobile social network , 2009, IEEE INFOCOM 2009.

[4]  Dario Pompili,et al.  On the interdependence of distributed topology control and geographical routing in ad hoc and sensor networks , 2005, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[5]  Scott Shenker,et al.  On a network creation game , 2003, PODC '03.

[6]  Alberto Blanc,et al.  Designing incentives for peer-to-peer routing , 2005, Proceedings IEEE 24th Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies..

[7]  Camille Roth,et al.  Connections: An Introduction to the Economics of Networks by Sanjeev Goyal , 2010, J. Artif. Soc. Soc. Simul..

[8]  A. Galeotti,et al.  The Law of the Few , 2010 .

[9]  Alessandro Vespignani,et al.  The role of the airline transportation network in the prediction and predictability of global epidemics , 2006, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[10]  Ion Stoica,et al.  Characterizing selfishly constructed overlay routing networks , 2004, IEEE INFOCOM 2004.

[11]  Deep Medhi,et al.  Network routing - algorithms, protocols, and architectures , 2007 .

[12]  Yannis M. Ioannides,et al.  Job Information Networks, Neighborhood Effects, and Inequality , 2004 .

[13]  Foster Provost,et al.  Audience selection for on-line brand advertising: privacy-friendly social network targeting , 2009, KDD.

[14]  E. Glaeser,et al.  Crime and Social Interactions , 1995 .

[15]  Hosung Park,et al.  What is Twitter, a social network or a news media? , 2010, WWW '10.

[16]  Sanjeev Goyal,et al.  A Noncooperative Model of Network Formation , 2000 .

[17]  Henning Schulzrinne,et al.  Effects of power conservation, wireless coverage and cooperation on data dissemination among mobile devices , 2001, MobiHoc '01.

[18]  Éva Tardos,et al.  Strategic network formation with structural holes , 2008, EC '08.

[19]  Matthew O. Jackson,et al.  On the formation of interaction networks in social coordination games , 2002, Games Econ. Behav..

[20]  M. Jackson,et al.  An Economic Model of Friendship: Homophily, Minorities and Segregation , 2007 .

[21]  Ruocheng Guo,et al.  Diffusion in Social Networks , 2015, SpringerBriefs in Computer Science.

[22]  Jon M. Kleinberg,et al.  The structure of information pathways in a social communication network , 2008, KDD.

[23]  Aniket Kittur,et al.  Crowdsourcing user studies with Mechanical Turk , 2008, CHI.

[24]  Krishna P. Gummadi,et al.  Measurement and analysis of online social networks , 2007, IMC '07.

[25]  M. Jackson,et al.  A Strategic Model of Social and Economic Networks , 1996 .

[26]  Lada A. Adamic,et al.  The role of social networks in information diffusion , 2012, WWW.

[27]  M. Chwe.  Communication and Coordination in Social Networks , 2000 .

[28]  Henning Schulzrinne,et al.  An Analysis of the Skype Peer-to-Peer Internet Telephony Protocol , 2004, Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM 2006. 25TH IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications.

[29]  M. Decker,et al.  Comparison of Different Approaches for Mobile Advertising , 2005, Second IEEE International Workshop on Mobile Commerce and Services.

[30]  P. Reny.  On the Existence of Pure and Mixed Strategy Nash Equilibria in Discontinuous Games , 1999 .

[31]  Young-Joo Suh,et al.  An Efficient Multicast Routing Protocol in Wireless Mobile Networks , 2001, Wirel. Networks.

[32]  Jure Leskovec,et al.  Inferring networks of diffusion and influence , 2010, KDD.