The evolution of structural balance in time-varying signed networks

Signed networks are ubiquitous in the real world. Most of them are temporal and the nodes and edges are varying over time, which makes the changing of network structure, including the clustering, the structural balance and so forth. In this work, we focus on the evolution of structural balance defined as the ratio of balanced triangles in the temporal signed networks. Firstly, it is shown that the balanced triangles tend to be formed during a relatively short time, while the formation of unbalanced ones takes a longer time. In addition, the real world networks exhibit strong structural balance in the early stage of the network generated and then it decreases to a stable state. As a result, we find that the unbalanced triangles are prone to be balanced as time goes, which is accordance with structural balance theory. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.