<p>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.</p>
Description
PLOS ONE: Geographic Constraints on Social Network Groups
%0 Journal Article
%1 onnela2011geographic
%A Onnela, Jukka-Pekka
%A Arbesman, Samuel
%A González, Marta C.
%A Barabási, Albert-László
%A Christakis, Nicholas A.
%D 2011
%I Public Library of Science
%J PLoS ONE
%K geographic law network power social spatial
%N 4
%P e16939
%R 10.1371/journal.pone.0016939
%T Geographic Constraints on Social Network Groups
%U http://dx.doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0016939
%V 6
%X <p>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.</p>
@article{onnela2011geographic,
abstract = { <p>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.</p>
},
added-at = {2012-12-05T11:18:20.000+0100},
author = {Onnela, Jukka-Pekka and Arbesman, Samuel and González, Marta C. and Barabási, Albert-László and Christakis, Nicholas A.},
biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2ceb0e62082d65339eaf79d69c155ee37/folke},
description = {PLOS ONE: Geographic Constraints on Social Network Groups},
doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0016939},
interhash = {67fc1577569ddc1eec641825934ca786},
intrahash = {ceb0e62082d65339eaf79d69c155ee37},
journal = {PLoS ONE},
keywords = {geographic law network power social spatial},
month = {04},
number = 4,
pages = {e16939},
publisher = {Public Library of Science},
timestamp = {2012-12-05T11:18:20.000+0100},
title = {Geographic Constraints on Social Network Groups},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0016939},
volume = 6,
year = 2011
}