A Critical Review of Centrality Measures in Social Networks

Social networks are currently gaining increasing impact especially in the light of the ongoing growth of web-based services like facebook.com. A central challenge for the social network analysis is the identification of key persons within a social network. In this context, the article aims at presenting the current state of research on centrality measures for social networks. In view of highly variable findings about the quality of various centrality measures, we also illustrate the tremendous importance of a reflected utilization of existing centrality measures. For this purpose, the paper analyzes five common centrality measures on the basis of three simple requirements for the behavior of centrality measures.