Eur. Phys. J. B (2016) 89: 269
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2016-70526-3

Regular Article

Wikipedia mining of hidden links between political leaders

¹ Laboratoire de Physique Théorique du CNRS, IRSAMC, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, UPS, 31062 Toulouse, France
² Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse, Université de Toulouse, INPT, Toulouse, France

^a e-mail: dima@irsamc.ups-tlse.fr

Received: 7 September 2016
Received in final form: 18 October 2016
Published online: 7 December 2016

Abstract

We describe a new method of reduced Google matrix which allows to establish direct and hidden links between a subset of nodes of a large directed network. This approach uses parallels with quantum scattering theory, developed for processes in nuclear and mesoscopic physics and quantum chaos. The method is applied to the Wikipedia networks in different language editions analyzing several groups of political leaders of USA, UK, Germany, France, Russia and G20. We demonstrate that this approach allows to recover reliably direct and hidden links among political leaders. We argue that the reduced Google matrix method can form the mathematical basis for studies in social and political sciences analyzing Leader-Members eXchange (LMX).