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Geographic Constraints on Social Network Groups

Author

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  • Jukka-Pekka Onnela
  • Samuel Arbesman
  • Marta C González
  • Albert-László Barabási
  • Nicholas A Christakis

Abstract

Social groups are fundamental building blocks of human societies. While our social interactions have always been constrained by geography, it has been impossible, due to practical difficulties, to evaluate the nature of this restriction on social group structure. We construct a social network of individuals whose most frequent geographical locations are also known. We also classify the individuals into groups according to a community detection algorithm. We study the variation of geographical span for social groups of varying sizes, and explore the relationship between topological positions and geographic positions of their members. We find that small social groups are geographically very tight, but become much more clumped when the group size exceeds about 30 members. Also, we find no correlation between the topological positions and geographic positions of individuals within network communities. These results suggest that spreading processes face distinct structural and spatial constraints.

Suggested Citation

  • Jukka-Pekka Onnela & Samuel Arbesman & Marta C González & Albert-László Barabási & Nicholas A Christakis, 2011. "Geographic Constraints on Social Network Groups," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(4), pages 1-7, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0016939
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0016939
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    9. Andreas Erlström & Markus Grillitsch & Ola Hall, 2022. "The geography of connectivity: a review of mobile positioning data for economic geography," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 24(4), pages 679-707, October.
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    12. Charles Nana Kwengwa & Arsalan Mujahid Ghouri & Nek Kamal Yeop Yunus & Habu Bah-Yaye Adamu, 2012. "Impact of Social Networking Websites on Generation Y: Emperical Findings from Selengor, Malaysia," Indian Journal of Commerce and Management Studies, Educational Research Multimedia & Publications,India, vol. 3(1), pages 31-37, January.
    13. Meysam Alizadeh & Claudio Cioffi-Revilla & Andrew Crooks, 2017. "Generating and analyzing spatial social networks," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 362-390, September.
    14. Christos Nicolaides & Luis Cueto-Felgueroso & Marta C González & Ruben Juanes, 2012. "A Metric of Influential Spreading during Contagion Dynamics through the Air Transportation Network," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(7), pages 1-10, July.
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