Triadic embeddedness structure in family networks predicts mobile communication response to a sudden natural disaster

Jayson S Jia,Nicholas A Christakis,Jianmin Jia,Yiwei Li,Yijian Ning,Xin Lu

doi:10.1038/s41467-021-24606-7

Abstract

Kinship networks are a fundamental social unit in human societies, and like social networks in general, provide social support in times of need. Here, we investigate the impact of sudden environmental shock, the Ms 7.0 2013 Ya’an earthquake, on the mobile communications patterns of local families, which we operationalize using anonymized individual-level mobile telecommunications metadata from family plan subscribers of a major carrier (N = 35,565 people). We demonstrate that families’ communications dynamics after the earthquake depended on their triadic embeddedness structure, a structural metric we propose that reflects the number of dyads in a family triad that share social ties. We find that individuals in more embedded family structures were more likely to first call other family plan members and slower in calling non-family ties immediately after the earthquake; these tendencies were stronger at higher earthquake intensity. In the weeks after the event, individuals in more embedded family structures had more reciprocal communications and contacted more social ties in their broader social network. Overall, families that are structurally more embedded displayed higher levels of intra-family coordination and mobilization of non-family social connections.

Highlights

Kinship networks are a fundamental social unit in human societies, and like social networks in general, provide social support in times of need
Social networks are often studied under stable environmental conditions, exogenous shocks, such as natural disasters, have been the rule rather than exception throughout human history[2]
It is conceivable that more embedded family structures come at a cost of relative insularity and fewer extra-family communications; after all, if one prioritizes family over friends and not the other way around, by definition, one’s relationships with friends are relatively less important. We explored this question by testing if embeddedness structure qualified the impact of the earthquake on degree centrality, i.e., social network size, over time, which reflects people’s relative sociability

Summary

Introduction

Kinship networks are a fundamental social unit in human societies, and like social networks in general, provide social support in times of need. We investigate the impact of sudden environmental shock, the Ms 7.0 2013 Ya’an earthquake, on the mobile communications patterns of local families, which we operationalize using anonymized individual-level mobile telecommunications metadata from family plan subscribers of a major carrier (N = 35,565 people). We find that individuals in more embedded family structures were more likely to first call other family plan members and slower in calling non-family ties immediately after the earthquake; these tendencies were stronger at higher earthquake intensity. In the weeks after the event, individuals in more embedded family structures had more reciprocal communications and contacted more social ties in their broader social network. How an individual interacts with their family vs (nonfamily) friends after a sudden disaster signals their relative social priorities, and the social network structural properties of the family.

Methods

Results

Conclusion