Betweenness

Betweenness is an indication of the degree to which an individual point (or node) controls communication. In the line network in Figure 3.2, B is between A and C; therefore, any information A would like to pass on to C has to travel through B, meaning that B can control the message that C receives, changing that message or preventing it from reaching C entirely. Social network analysis can use measures of betweenness to designate individuals as “influencers” within a given network, seeing how language changes and morphs in the exchange from one actor to the next, as in a giant game of telephone. An important finding for the IC is that betweenness allows researchers to get a vivid idea of what a small number of critical nodes are discussing, even if the users themselves have put up high-security protections on their social media presence if the researchers understand how less-critical actors are connected to that node. In other words, in the giant game of telephone, one can extrapolate what the person in the middle said by determining what the people on either side of him said.