Paper Info
Title
Geographical impacts on social networks from perspectives of space and place: an empirical study using mobile phone data.
Abstract
Space and place are two fundamental concepts in geography. Geographical factors have long been known as drivers of many aspects of people’s social networks. But whether and how space and place affect social networks differently are still unclear. The widespread use of location-aware devices provides a novel source for distinguishing the mechanisms of their impacts on social networks. Using mobile phone data, this paper explores the effects of space and place on social networks. From the perspective of space, we confirm the distance decay effect in social networks, based on a comparison between synthetic social ties generated by a null model and actual social ties derived from real-world data. From the perspective of place, we introduce several measures to evaluate interactions between individuals and inspect the trio relationship including distance, spatio-temporal co-occurrence, and social ties. We found that people’s interaction is a more important factor than spatial proximity, indicating that the spatial factor has a stronger impact on social networks in place compared to that in space. Furthermore, we verify the hypothesis that interactions play an important role in strengthening friendships.
Year
DOI
Venue
2016
10.1007/s10109-016-0236-8
Journal of Geographical Systems
Keywords
Field
DocType
Geographical impacts, Space and place, Spatially-embedded social networks, Mobile phone data, Individuals’ interaction, C18, D83
Data science,Econometrics,Social network,Distance decay,Simulation,Social learning,Null model,Mobile phone,Geography,Interpersonal ties,Empirical research
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
18
4
1435-5949
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
3
0.42
12
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Li Shi1121.93
Lun Wu2266.94
Guanghua Chi361.51
Yu Liu439334.91