OWA-based fuzzy m-ary adjacency relations in Social Network Analysis.

In this paper we propose an approach to Social Network Analysis (SNA) based on fuzzy m-ary adjacency relations. In particular, we show that the dimension of the analysis can naturally be increased and interesting results can be derived. Therefore, fuzzy m-ary adjacency relations can be computed starting from fuzzy binary relations and introducing OWA-based aggregations. The behavioral assumptions derived from the measure and the exam of individual propensity to connect with other suggest that OWA operators can be considered particularly suitable in characterizing such relationships.