An ecological approach to structural flexibility in online communication systems

This paper investigates the structural flexibility of online communication systems using an ecological approach. The authors demonstrate that despite the complexity of actor-meme interactions and environmental changes, the underlying architecture of these systems evolves into recurring patterns. They propose a model that predicts, and data confirms, that the competition for visibility among users leads to a re-equilibration of the network's mesoscale towards self-similar nested arrangements. However, this structural flexibility is not mirrored at the dynamical level, with environmental shocks leaving lasting traces on the system's node dynamics.

María J. Palazzi, Albert Solé-Ribalta, Violeta Calleja-Solanas, Sandro Meloni, Carlos A. Plata, Samir Suweis, Javier Borge-Holthoefer