Description
An annual survey of the cs.SI arXiv category, covering research published from September 2025 – August 2026. Built on a close-reading set of 100 papers and organised into 32 chapters, it maps the year by the field's research sub-directions.
Book framework (share of the year's output):
- Large-Scale Social and Information Network Analysis (87.6%) — This subdirection focuses on analyzing large-scale social and information networks, addressing challenges in structural analysis, pattern detection, and the impact of digital platforms on political and social dynamics.
- Graph Neural Networks for Link Prediction and Node Classification (4.6%) — This subdirection develops and applies graph neural networks to fundamental network tasks such as link prediction, node classification, and community detection, with emphasis on scalability and performance.
- LLM-Based Social Media Simulation and Agent Modeling (4.2%) — This subdirection uses large language models to simulate social media interactions, misinformation propagation, and opinion formation among agents, exploring human-like behavior in online platforms.
- Community Detection in Complex and Signed Networks (1.8%) — This subdirection improves community detection algorithms for complex, signed, and temporal networks, addressing challenges in overlapping communities and real-world applicability.
- Influence Maximization and Diffusion Modeling (0.9%) — This subdirection investigates influence propagation and maximization strategies in social networks, modeling collective behavior and diffusion mechanisms under resource constraints.
- Opinion Dynamics and Temporal Belief Evolution (0.8%) — This subdirection models how opinions and beliefs evolve over time in networked populations, incorporating temporal dynamics, bounded confidence, and media influence.
- Networked Game Dynamics and Role Analysis (0.1%) — This subdirection examines evolutionary game dynamics and role shifts in networked populations, focusing on reputation, consensus, and critical structural roles.
Each sub-direction is covered across three chapters — how it framed its questions, the strength of its key findings, and its open debates and frontiers — so the reader gets a traceable picture of what this part of the field actually produced over the year.