Detecting community structure in networks by propagating labels of nodes

Abstract

Community structure is a common property of many networks. Automatically finding communities in networks can provide invaluable help in understanding the structure and the functionality of networks. Many algorithms to find communities have been developed in recent years. Here we devise a new algorithm to detect communities in networks-propagation algorithm. By propagating the labels of nodes in networks, detecting communities are transformed into analyzing the labels of nodes in networks in this algorithm. Real-world and computer-generated networks are used to verify this algorithm. The results of our experiments indicate that it is sensitive to community structure and effective at discovering communities in networks. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.