Multi-view Graph Representation Learning Beyond Homophily

Bei Lin, You Li, Ning Gui, Zhuopeng Xu, Zhiwu Yu

Abstract: Unsupervised graph representation learning (GRL) aims at distilling diverse graph information into task-agnostic embeddings without label supervision. Due to a lack of support from labels, recent representation learning methods usually adopt self-supervised learning, and embeddings are learned by solving a handcrafted auxiliary task (so-called pretext task). However, partially due to the irregular non-Euclidean data in graphs, the pretext tasks are generally designed under homophily assumptions and cornered in the low-frequency signals, which results in significant loss of other signals, especially high-frequency signals widespread in graphs with heterophily. Motivated by this limitation, we propose a multi-view perspective and the usage of diverse pretext tasks to capture different signals in graphs into embeddings. A novel framework, denoted as Multi-view Graph Encoder (MVGE), is proposed, and a set of key designs are identified. More specifically, a set of new pretext tasks are designed to encode different types of signals, and a straightforward operation is proposed to maintain both the commodity and personalization in both the attribute and the structural levels. Extensive experiments on synthetic and real-world network datasets show that the node representations learned with MVGE achieve significant performance improvements in three different downstream tasks, especially on graphs with heterophily.