In social network analysis, the co-stardom network represents the collaboration graph of film actors i.e. movie stars. The co-stardom network can be represented by an undirected graph. Nodes correspond to the movie star actors and two nodes are linked if they co-starred (performed) in the same movie. The links are un-directed, and can be weighted or not depending on the goals of study. If the number of times two actors appeared in a movie is needed, links are assigned weights.[1] Initially, the network was found to have a small-world property.[2] Afterwards, it was discovered that more precisely it exhibits a scale-free (power-law) behavior.[3]
The co-stardom network can also be represented by a bipartite graph where nodes are of two types: actors and movies. Links connect different types of nodes (i.e. actors to movies) if they have a relationship (actors in a movie).[4]
The parlor game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon involves finding paths in this network from specified actors to Kevin Bacon.