Abstract
This paper describes a study in which the pattern of distribution of the number of friends among users of the Vkontakte social network among residents of eight large cities of the CIS (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Almaty, Novosibirsk, Tashkent, Kiev, Yekaterinburg, Pavlodar) was studied. Experimental data show that this distribution is of a similar nature for all selected cities. A semi-empirical model was built, on the basis of which an explicit form of theoretical dependence was obtained, describing the nature of the distribution of the number of mutual contacts (“friends”) of users of social online networks. It is shown that this theoretical dependence agrees with satisfactory accuracy with experimental data for a sufficiently large sample of cities. It is established that the Dunbar number, which is included in the dependencies considered as a control parameter, is a characteristic of the communication environment of each specific city and correlates with the population of the city.
Highlights
The study of the communication space formed by the rapid development of telecommunication technologies is of considerable interest in several aspects
This means that the analogue of the Dunbar number included in the dependencies used as a parameter can be considered as a characteristic of the communication space for each specific city
We note that based on heuristic considerations and literature data on the nature of the Dunbar number, we can propose a simple semi-empirical model that adequately describes the experimental distributions of users of social online networks by the number of friends
Summary
The study of the communication space formed by the rapid development of telecommunication technologies is of considerable interest in several aspects. Social online networks connecting a large number of people are an ideal platform for conducting various informational influences of a mass nature, including in the framework of information wars [6-11]. Modern telecommunication technologies make it possible to receive education online, which creates a number of advantages (access to educational courses of universities around the world, saving travel time, convenience for people with advanced requirements) [12-16]. The consistent use of social online networks for various purposes requires their adequate theoretical description on a quantitative level. We analyze the distribution of users of social online networks by the number of friends (mutual contacts) and propose a model that describes this distribution
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