{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/information-access-equality-on-network","title":"Information Access Equality on Network Generative Models","arxiv_id":"2107.02263","date":"2021-07-05","proceeding":null,"authors":["Xindi Wang","Onur Varol","Tina Eliassi-Rad"],"abstract":"It is well known that networks generated by common mechanisms such as preferential attachment and homophily can disadvantage the minority group by limiting their ability to establish links with the majority group. This has the effect of limiting minority nodes' access to information. We present the results of an empirical study on the equality of information access in network models with different growth mechanisms and spreading processes. For growth mechanisms, we focus on the majority/minority dichotomy, homophily, preferential attachment, and diversity. For spreading processes, we investigate simple vs. complex contagions, different transmission rates within and between groups, and various seeding conditions. We observe two phenomena. First, information access equality is a complex interplay between network structures and the spreading processes. Second, there is a trade-off between equality and efficiency of information access under certain circumstances (e.g., when inter-group edges are low and information transmits asymmetrically). Our findings can be used to make recommendations for mechanistic design of social networks with information access equality.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.02263v2","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2107.02263v2.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"links_only","authors_date_abstract":"arXiv metadata, CC0 1.0 (https://info.arxiv.org/help/license), from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"information-access-equality-on-network","repo_url":"https://github.com/xindi-dumbledore/NetInfoAccEqua","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":0,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}