Improving Robustness of Scale-Free Networks to Message Distortion

Vast numbers of organizations and individuals communicate every day by sending messages over social networks. These messages, however, are subject to change as they propagate through the network. This paper calculates the distortion of a message as it propagates in a social network with a scale-free topology, and suggests a remedial process in which a node corrects the distortion during the diffusion process to improve the robustness of scale-free networks to message distortion. We test a model on a simulation of different types of scale-free networks, and compare different sets of corrective nodes including hubs, regular (non hub) nodes, and a combination of hubs and regular nodes. Using hubs that correct the distorted message while it is diffused are shown to decrease the global error measurement of the distortion, and improve the robustness of the network.