Activity-based temporal hypergraphs: from individual activity to collective social dynamics

Abstract

Temporal hypergraphs provide an interesting representation for many social systems, as they integrate both the temporal and group nature of social interactions. Designing models of time-varying hyper-networks yields thus a convenient way to generate surrogates of empirical social systems, to understand the mechanisms underlying their emergent properties, and to investigate the evolution of dynamical processes taking place on such structures. Here, we focus on a specific and powerful class of these models, the activity-based temporal hypergraphs. We show how activity mechanisms provide control over the time scale of the dynamics, allow high modelling flexibility, and capture heterogeneity in agents' behavior. We also highlight how the activity can straightforwardly be extracted from empirical data to create surrogate datasets. We present paradigmatic examples of such models: the higher-order activity-driven models (HADx), which show that different underlying rules for the selection of active interactions produce different higher-order dynamics; the Emerging Activity Temporal Hypergraph model (EATH), able to generate surrogates of empirical systems by using higher-order mechanisms driven by both activity and group memory. We conclude discussing future perspectives for activity-based temporal hypergraphs, highlighting the potential of this framework to bridge realistic modelling of social dynamics with the study of the complex dynamical process they can support, from social contagion to opinion dynamics.