Social network evolution and actor oriented models. Applications in the fields of friendship formation, decision making, emergence of cooperation, and coalition formation
Mathématiques informatique et sciences humaines, Volume 137 (1997), pp. 61-80.

We present an overview of different actor oriented models of network evolution, that have been developed in the last couple of years. The models are constructed in different fields of application and all have in common that the emergence of network structure is directly or indirectly of interest. Each model is based on a set of actors and a set of behavioral rules of these actors, resulting in interaction mechanisms and the coming into existence of some network pattern of relationships. Actors vary from individuals and families to political parties. Relationships are either directed or undirected and vary from friendship to cooperation, and access to coalition partners. Simulation is used to obtain distribution of possible resulting network structure because this and other aspects of the models, make it hard to be solved analytically. We think that the use of this kind of simulation models, by examining the influence of both endogeneous and exogeneous variables, contributes to improvement of theory building.

Nous présentons différents modèles d'acteurs concernant l'évolution des réseaux de relations, qui ont été développés dans les deux dernières années. Ces modèles, relatifs à différents domaines d'application ont en commun l'intérêt porté à l'émergence du réseau. Chaque modèle est fondé sur un ensemble d'acteurs et un ensemble de règles de comportement de ces acteurs d'où découle un mécanisme d'interaction et l'apparition de certaines formes de réseaux. Les acteurs sont de natures diverses, individus, familles, partis politiques. Les relations sont soit orientées, soit non orientées et varient de l'amitié à la coopération en passant par l'émergence de coalitions. Comme il est difficile de résoudre le problème de façon analytique, on utilise la simulation pour produire des distributions de réseaux résultant du modèle. Nous pensons que l'utilisation de ce type de modèles de simulation, en permettant d'examiner l'influence des variables endogènes et exogènes, contribue à tester les constructions théoriques.

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Zeggelink, Evelien P. H. Social network evolution and actor oriented models. Applications in the fields of friendship formation, decision making, emergence of cooperation, and coalition formation. Mathématiques informatique et sciences humaines, Volume 137 (1997), pp. 61-80. http://www.numdam.org/item/MSH_1997__137__61_0/

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