Network Centrality

The term network centrality refers to a measure of the prominence or importance of an individual actor within a social network. A social network can be defined as a network formed by a set of interacting social entities (actors) and the linkages (relations) among them. The definition of centrality was first developed in the late 1940s and early 1950s by Alex Bavelas and Harold Leavitt when studying communication structure. From the perspective of social network analysis, the prominent actors are those that are extensively involved in the relationships with other actors. There are several different ways to define the involvement of an actor with regard to the relationships with others. These methods focus on some meaningful centrality indicators, such as degree, closeness, betweenness, information, and ...