文章基本信息

标题：How Physical Proximity Shapes Complex Social Networks
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作者：Arkadiusz Stopczynski ; Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland ; Sune Lehmann 等
期刊名称：Scientific Reports
电子版ISSN：2045-2322
出版年度：2018
卷号：8
期号：1
页码：17722
DOI：10.1038/s41598-018-36116-6
语种：English
出版社：Springer Nature
摘要：Social interactions among humans create complex networks and - despite a recent increase of online communication - the interactions mediated through physical proximity remain a fundamental way for people to connect. A common way to quantify the nature of the links between individuals is to consider repeated interactions: frequently occurring interactions indicate strong ties, such as friendships, while ties with low weights can indicate random encounters. Here we focus on a different dimension: rather than the strength of links, we study physical distance between individuals when a link is activated. The findings presented here are based on a dataset of proximity events in a population of approximately 500 individuals. To quantify the impact of the physical proximity on the dynamic network, we use a simulated epidemic spreading processes in two distinct networks of physical proximity. We consider the network of short-range interactions defined as d [Formula: see text] 1 meter, and the long-range which includes all interactions d [Formula: see text] 10 meters. Since these two networks arise from the same set of underlying behavioral data, we are able to quantitatively measure how the specific definition of the proximity network - short-range versus long-range - impacts the resulting network structure as well as spreading dynamics in epidemic simulations. We find that the short-range network - consistent with the literature - is characterized by densely-connected neighborhoods bridged by weak ties. More surprisingly, however, we show that spreading in the long-range network is quite different, mainly shaped by spurious interactions.