A novel multiobjective particle swarm optimization algorithm for signed network community detection

Signed graphs or networks are effective models for analyzing complex social systems. Community detection from signed networks has received enormous attention from diverse fields. In this paper, the signed network community detection problem is addressed from the viewpoint of evolutionary computation. A multiobjective optimization model based on link density is newly proposed for the community detection problem. A novel multiobjective particle swarm optimization algorithm is put forward to solve the proposed optimization model. Each single run of the proposed algorithm can produce a set of evenly distributed Pareto solutions each of which represents a network community structure. To check the performance of the proposed algorithm, extensive experiments on synthetic and real-world signed networks are carried out. Comparisons against several state-of-the-art approaches for signed network community detection are carried out. The experiments demonstrate that the proposed optimization model and the algorithm are promising for community detection from signed networks.