# Network Science Research | Bruno Gonçalves

Source: https://bgoncalves.com/network-science/

> Bruno Gonçalves's research on network science, complex systems, social network analysis, and human mobility.

## Network Science Research

Bruno Gonçalves's network science research concerns the structure and dynamics of social systems: how connections form and dissolve over time, how information travels across them, and how collective attention rises and decays. With over 17,000 citations and an h-index of 44, this work has helped establish that when links change as fast as the processes running over them, the static network picture stops being an adequate approximation.

## Research Areas

### Time-Varying Networks

Networks whose links appear and vanish on the same timescale as the processes running over them — and the activity-driven framework that makes them analytically tractable.

### Information Diffusion

How information spreads across a social network, which spreaders actually matter, and how diffusion in turn reshapes the network that carries it.

### Collective Attention

The distinct dynamical classes by which topics rise and fall in public attention, and what social signals reveal before conventional reporting does.

### Social Structure & Well-being

The cognitive limits on how many relationships people maintain online, and how emotional states correlate across social ties.

## Activity-Driven Networks

Most network models treat the topology as fixed while a process — a rumour, an infection, a random walk — unfolds on top of it. That assumption breaks whenever links are created and destroyed on the same timescale as the process itself, which is the normal case for real social contact. The **activity-driven** framework instead characterizes each node by the rate at which it initiates connections, generating the temporal network from those activity rates. This makes the time-varying case analytically tractable, and it changes the answers: random walks explore such networks differently, and diffusion and search behave unlike their static-network counterparts.

## Science of Science

A related strand turns these methods on scientific research itself — mapping how physics topics relate and evolve using [machine learning over the research space](https://bgoncalves.com/pdf/s13688-019-0210-z.pdf) (2019), and characterizing [scientific production and consumption in physics](https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.6569) (2013).

## Key Publications

- [Network Happiness: How Online Social Interactions Relate to Our Well Being](https://bgoncalves.com/pdf/bollen2018.pdf) Bollen, Gonçalves. Complex Spreading Phenomena in Social Systems (2018)
- [The happiness paradox: your friends are happier than you](https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.02665) Bollen, Gonçalves, van de Leemput, Ruan. EPJ Data Science (2017)
- [The dynamics of information-driven coordination phenomena: a transfer entropy analysis](https://arxiv.org/abs/1507.06106) Borge-Holthoefer, Perra, Gonçalves, González-Bailón, Arenas, Moreno, Vespignani. Science Advances (2016)
- [The Role of Information Diffusion in the Evolution of Social Networks](https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.6276) Weng, Ratkiewicz, Perra, Gonçalves, Castillo, Bonchi, Schifanella, Menczer, Flammini. KDD (2013)
- [Emergence of influential spreaders in modified rumor models](https://arxiv.org/abs/1209.1351) Borge-Holthoefer, Meloni, Gonçalves, Moreno. Journal of Statistical Physics (2013)
- [Activity driven modeling of time varying networks](https://arxiv.org/abs/1203.5351) Perra, Gonçalves, Pastor-Satorras, Vespignani. Scientific Reports (2012)
- [Walking and searching in time-varying networks](https://arxiv.org/abs/1206.2858) Perra, Baronchelli, Mocanu, Gonçalves, Pastor-Satorras, Vespignani. Physical Review Letters (2012)
- [Dynamical Classes of Collective Attention in Twitter](https://arxiv.org/abs/1111.1896) Lehmann, Gonçalves, Ramasco, Cattuto. WWW (2012)
- [Beating the news using Social Media: the case study of American Idol](https://arxiv.org/abs/1205.4467) Ciulla, Mocanu, Baronchelli, Gonçalves, Perra, Vespignani. EPJ Data Science (2012)
- [Modeling Users’ Activity on Twitter Networks: Validation of Dunbar’s Number](https://arxiv.org/abs/1105.5170) Gonçalves, Perra, Vespignani. PLOS ONE (2011)
- [Happiness is assortative in online social networks](https://arxiv.org/abs/1103.0784) Bollen, Gonçalves, Ruan, Mao. Artificial Life (2011)

A complete list is available on the [Publications page](https://bgoncalves.com/publications).

## Related Research

Several threads that began as network science now have pages of their own:

🕸️ [Epidemic Modeling](https://bgoncalves.com/epidemic-modeling) · [Human Mobility & Urban Science](https://bgoncalves.com/human-mobility) · [Computational Linguistics](https://bgoncalves.com/computational-linguistics) · [Political Communication](https://bgoncalves.com/political-communication) · [Statistical Physics](https://bgoncalves.com/statistical-physics)