Efficient identification of node importance in social networks

In social networks, identifying influential nodes is essential to control the social networks. Identifying influential nodes has been among one of the most intensively studies of analyzing the structure of networks. There are a multitude of evaluation indicators of node importance in social networks, such as degree, betweenness and cumulative nomination and so on. But most of the indicators only reveal one characteristic of the node. In fact, in social networks, node importance is not affected by a single factor, but is affected by a number of factors. Therefore, the paper puts forward a relatively comprehensive and effective method of evaluation node importance in social networks by using the multi-objective decision method. Firstly, we select several different representative indicators given a certain weight. We regard each node as a solution and different indicators of each node as the solution properties. Then through calculating the closeness degree of each node to the ideal solution, we obtain evaluation indicator of node importance in social networks. Finally, we verify the effectiveness of the proposed method experimentally on a few actual social networks. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.