Information content: Assessing meso-scale structures in complex networks

¹ Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Departamento de Engenharia Electrotécnica, Universidade Nova de Lisboa Lisboa, Portugal
² Innaxis Foundation & Research Institute - José Ortega y Gasset 20, 28006, Madrid, Spain
³ Center for Biomedical Technology, Technical University of Madrid, Campus Montegancedo 28223 Pozuelo de Alarcón, Madrid, Spain

Received: 8 February 2014
Accepted: 10 April 2014

Abstract

We propose a novel measure to assess the presence of meso-scale structures in complex networks. This measure is based on the identification of regular patterns in the adjacency matrix of the network, and on the calculation of the quantity of information lost when pairs of nodes are iteratively merged. We show how this measure is able to quantify several meso-scale structures, like the presence of modularity, bipartite and core-periphery configurations, or motifs. Results corresponding to a large set of real networks are used to validate its ability to detect non-trivial topological patterns.