Title
Geographic Constraints On Social Network Groups
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.
Year
DOI
Venue
2010
10.1371/journal.pone.0016939
PLOS ONE
Keywords
Field
DocType
group size,social network,social groups,social interaction
Social group,Social network,Economic geography,Bioinformatics,Social support,Geography
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
6
4
1932-6203
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
100
6.61
8
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Jukka-pekka Onnela147536.55
Samuel Arbesman21209.42
Marta C. Gonzalez316111.68
Albert-lászló Barabási446491107.35
Nicholas A Christakis51006.61