Abstract
Social capital has been studied in economics, sociology and political science as one of the key elements that promote the development of modern societies. It can be defined as the source of capital that facilitates cooperation through shared social norms. In this work, we investigate whether and to what extent synchronization aspects of mobile communication patterns are associated with social capital metrics. Interestingly, our results show that our synchronization-based approach well correlates with existing social capital metrics (i.e., Referendum turnout, Blood donations, and Association density), being also able to characterize the different role played by high synchronization within a close proximity-based community and high synchronization among different communities. Hence, the proposed approach can provide timely, effective analysis at a limited cost over a large territory.
Highlights
Synchronization is a process that allows the automatic coordination of units and events in time
We find that per-capita income has a strong relevance in describing the Association density, while it shows a minor role in explaining the higher Referendums turnout and Blood donations
5 Conclusion In this paper, we have introduced a couple of novel synchronization metrics that represent an innovative and efficient way to describe traditional social capital measures (i.e., Referendum turnouts, Blood donations, and Association density)
Summary
Synchronization is a process that allows the automatic coordination of units and events in time. Synchronization is a widespread phenomenon observed everywhere in nature, from animals [1] to neurons [2] and heart cells [3], and up to more complex entities like human beings [4, 5]. Synchronization emerges as a spontaneous coordination mechanism that provides benefits to groups and the individuals that live within [6]. Synchronization increases the probability of group survival, by reducing the individual costs required by the engagement of coordinated and cooperative action [7]: in a multilevel selection mechanism, a group of cooperators has higher chances of evolutionary success than a group of defectors.
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