# Measuring Information Propagation in Literary Social Networks

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.13980 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.13980/

## Key facts

- Cited by 15 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 29 Apr 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [The Project Dialogism Novel Corpus: A Dataset for Quotation Attribution in Literary Texts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.05836/) (2022)
- [NarraBench: A Comprehensive Framework for Narrative Benchmarking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.09869/) (2025)
- [Memory and Knowledge Augmented Language Models for Inferring Salience in Long-Form Stories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.03754/) (2021)
- [The Emotion Dynamics of Literary Novels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.02474/) (2024)
- [Improving Automatic Quotation Attribution in Literary Novels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03734/) (2023)
- [Evaluating LLMs for Quotation Attribution in Literary Texts: A Case Study of LLaMa3](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11380/) (2024)
- [Distinguishing Fictional Voices: a Study of Authorship Verification Models for Quotation Attribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.16968/) (2024)
- [Improving Quotation Attribution with Fictional Character Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11368/) (2024)
- [QuoteKG: A Multilingual Knowledge Graph of Quotes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.09562/) (2022)
- [Computational Representations of Character Significance in Novels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.15508/) (2026)
- [Automatic Annotation of Direct Speech in Written French Narratives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.15634/) (2023)
- [Identifying Speakers and Addressees of Quotations in Novels with Prompt Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.09452/) (2024)
- [Structuralist Approach to AI Literary Criticism: Leveraging Greimas Semiotic Square for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.21360/) (2025)
- [When Models Know More Than They Say: Probing Analogical Reasoning in LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.03877/) (2026)
- [Fast and Accurate Quotation Attribution in Literary Texts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.02359/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present the task of modeling information propagation in literature, in which we seek to identify pieces of information passing from character A to character B to character C, only given a description of their activity in text. We describe a new pipeline for measuring information propagation in this domain and publish a new dataset for speaker attribution, enabling the evaluation of an important component of this pipeline on a wider range of literary texts than previously studied. Using this pipeline, we analyze the dynamics of information propagation in over 5,000 works of fiction, finding that information flows through characters that fill structural holes connecting different communities, and that characters who are women are depicted as filling this role much more frequently than characters who are men.