Abstract
Human social networks are composed of multiple dynamic and overlapping communication networks, in which membership changes over time. However, less well understood are whether and how our communication patterns are similar or different over time and across various modes of communication. Here, we use data on the frequency of phone calls, text messages, and in-person interactions to examine the social signatures of more than 700 students in a university setting. Our analysis shows that although there is substantial turnover in participants’ networks, participants’ social signatures are persistent across time and consistent across communication modes. Further, we find that communication networks that are mediated via phone calls or text messages are more stable than are in-person networks. Our results show that, likely due to limitations in cognitive and emotional resources, people maintain networks of relatively stable size and structure their communication within those networks in predictable patterns. Our findings may help with formalizing social network theories, explaining individual-level attitudes and behaviors and aggregate-level social phenomena, and making predictions and detecting abnormalities in applied fields.
Highlights
Social interactions play an important role in many aspects of human societies at both the individual level, such as mental health and individual well-being (House et al 1988; Holt-Lunstad et al 2010; Manninen et al 2017), as well as the societal level, such as infectious disease control (Kafsi et al 2013; Zhang et al 2020) and viral marketing (Szabó and Barabasi 2003)
To enable an in-depth understanding of the channel- and time-invariant characteristics of social network structures, we focus on dynamic multi-layer social networks across communication modes and across time
We use the Copenhagen Network Study that enables the integration of in-person networks and mediated networks (Stopczynski et al 2014; Mones et al 2017; Sekara et al 2016; Alessandretti et al 2018; Sapiezynski et al 2018). Scholars using this data have found that relationships in mediated settings, such as Facebook interactions, phone calls, and text messages, are frequently reflected in offline behaviors (Sapiezynski et al 2018) and that central members in the offline network interact with the environment regularly, whereas core members in the online networks show irregular behaviors and are more active in irregular social activities (Mones et al 2017). These data have the substantial potential to be used to examine a key component of multi-modal communication networks, namely whether social signatures persist both in time and across communication modes
Summary
Social interactions play an important role in many aspects of human societies at both the individual level, such as mental health and individual well-being (House et al 1988; Holt-Lunstad et al 2010; Manninen et al 2017), as well as the societal level, such as infectious disease control (Kafsi et al 2013; Zhang et al 2020) and viral marketing (Szabó and Barabasi 2003). To enable an in-depth understanding of the channel- and time-invariant characteristics of social network structures, we focus on dynamic multi-layer social networks across communication modes (i.e., person-to-person, phone calls, and text messages) and across time. Scholars using this data have found that relationships in mediated settings, such as Facebook interactions, phone calls, and text messages, are frequently reflected in offline behaviors (Sapiezynski et al 2018) and that central members in the offline network interact with the environment regularly, whereas core members in the online networks show irregular behaviors and are more active in irregular social activities (Mones et al 2017) These data have the substantial potential to be used to examine a key component of multi-modal communication networks, namely whether social signatures persist both in time and across communication modes. We note that another researcher independently and contemporaneously used the same data set to study a related set of questions (Schulman 2021)
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