Link to Article
In the opening days of this course we discussed at length the different ways to create triadic closure amongst several nodes. The idea that information can flow just as easily through weak ties led us to the analysis of information flow across social networks and how it is entirely possible that weak ties can provide vast amounts of information.

The defense agencies of the United States have taken to using network theory and graphs to help identify potential terrorists. The idea behind this approach is similar to that of the class and student graph derived during one of the homeworks. Through the use of metadata from emails and phonecalls has allowed the mapping of social networks and the idea is to find the “hub,” of focus, like the class student example. These hubs help to identify potential pairing that could lead to terrorist activity through the idea of triadic closure. As well the hub could be connected to several networks through weak ties but yet it is through these weak ties that opportunities for activity could evolve.

The biggest flaw with this approach, which the article states, is that by the three edges we are connected to “hundreds of thousands of people,” which makes it very difficult to analyze this type of graph. A possible modification of this approach is the addition of betweenness values to these hubs based upon the concept of proportional betweenness. This idea was discussed in a homework, that betweenness values could be given proportionally based on the distance the between node v is from t and s. This would show who the true hubs are through their ability to connect many people he or she is close with. Identifiying bridges between different networks groups would also show who brokers the flow of information.