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Comparing the Centralities of Core Characters in Three Sitcoms

Author: BAZZAN, A. L. C.

Abstract: The area of network science provides tools to analyze the structure of the social network of characters underlying the plot of narratives such as sitcoms. It can also help to detect roles and characters that are prominent. In this paper, three sitcoms – Seinfeld, Friends, and The Big Bang Theory – are analyzed, whose plots are centered on a couple of friends who face typical daily situations. For such analysis, characteristic measures of their social networks are used, as well as measures that compute the importance of single characters, when interacting with others in the network. The contributions of the present paper are manifold. For one side, it analyzes social networks that resemble social relations among young people. A second contribution is towards extending previous studies that compare those sitcoms. Lastly, this paper also investigates whether there is a correlation between the respective ratings and a measure of the distribution of degrees.

Keywords: Social networks, Centrality measures, Sitcom.

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Full Reference: Bazzan, A. L. C., "Comparing the Centralities of Core Characters in Three Sitcoms", Revista de Sistemas de Informação da FSMA n 27(2021) pp. 54-66

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