Structure and tie strengths in mobile communication networks

Edited by H. Eugene Stanley, Boston University, Boston, MA, and approved January 27, 2007
May 1, 2007
104 (18) 7332-7336

Abstract

Electronic databases, from phone to e-mails logs, currently provide detailed records of human communication patterns, offering novel avenues to map and explore the structure of social and communication networks. Here we examine the communication patterns of millions of mobile phone users, allowing us to simultaneously study the local and the global structure of a society-wide communication network. We observe a coupling between interaction strengths and the network's local structure, with the counterintuitive consequence that social networks are robust to the removal of the strong ties but fall apart after a phase transition if the weak ties are removed. We show that this coupling significantly slows the diffusion process, resulting in dynamic trapping of information in communities and find that, when it comes to information diffusion, weak and strong ties are both simultaneously ineffective.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Tamás Vicsek for useful discussions. J.-P.O. thanks the Graduate School in Computational Methods of Information Technology (ComMIT), the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, and the Väisälä Foundation for a travel grant to visit A.-L.B. at Harvard University. This research was partially supported by the Academy of Finland, Centres of Excellence Programmes, Project nos. 44897 and 213470 and Grant OTKA K60456. G.S. and A.-L.B. were supported by National Science Foundation Grants ITR DMR-0426737, CNS-0540348, and IIS-0513650 and by the James S. McDonald Foundation.

Supporting Information

Adobe PDF - 06-10245appendix.pdf
Adobe PDF - 06-10245appendix.pdf

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Information & Authors

Information

Published in

Go to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Vol. 104 | No. 18
May 1, 2007
PubMed: 17456605

Classifications

Submission history

Received: November 18, 2006
Published online: May 1, 2007
Published in issue: May 1, 2007

Keywords

  1. complex systems
  2. complex networks
  3. diffusion and spreading
  4. phase transition
  5. social systems

Acknowledgments

We thank Tamás Vicsek for useful discussions. J.-P.O. thanks the Graduate School in Computational Methods of Information Technology (ComMIT), the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, and the Väisälä Foundation for a travel grant to visit A.-L.B. at Harvard University. This research was partially supported by the Academy of Finland, Centres of Excellence Programmes, Project nos. 44897 and 213470 and Grant OTKA K60456. G.S. and A.-L.B. were supported by National Science Foundation Grants ITR DMR-0426737, CNS-0540348, and IIS-0513650 and by the James S. McDonald Foundation.

Notes

This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0610245104/DC1.

Authors

Affiliations

Laboratory of Computational Engineering, Helsinki University of Technology, P.O. Box 9203, FI-02015 TKK, Helsinki, Finland;
Physics Department, Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford University, Oxford OX1 3PU, United Kingdom;
J. Saramäki
Laboratory of Computational Engineering, Helsinki University of Technology, P.O. Box 9203, FI-02015 TKK, Helsinki, Finland;
J. Hyvönen
Laboratory of Computational Engineering, Helsinki University of Technology, P.O. Box 9203, FI-02015 TKK, Helsinki, Finland;
G. Szabó
Department of Physics and Center for Complex Networks Research, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN 46556;
Center for Cancer Systems Biology, Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard University, Boston, MA 02115;
D. Lazer
John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138; and
K. Kaski
Laboratory of Computational Engineering, Helsinki University of Technology, P.O. Box 9203, FI-02015 TKK, Helsinki, Finland;
J. Kertész
Laboratory of Computational Engineering, Helsinki University of Technology, P.O. Box 9203, FI-02015 TKK, Helsinki, Finland;
Department of Theoretical Physics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, H1111, Budapest, Hungary
A.-L. Barabási
Department of Physics and Center for Complex Networks Research, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN 46556;
Center for Cancer Systems Biology, Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard University, Boston, MA 02115;

Notes

To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: [email protected]
Author contributions: J.-P.O., J.S., J.K., and A.-L.B. performed research; J.-P.O., J.H., G.S., and D.L. analyzed data; and J.-P.O., J.S., D.L., K.K., J.K., and A.-L.B. wrote the paper.

Competing Interests

Conflict of interest statement: A.L.B. served as a paid consultant for the phone company that provided the phone data.

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    Structure and tie strengths in mobile communication networks
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
    • Vol. 104
    • No. 18
    • pp. 7309-7729

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